Getting your player ready...
SALT LAKE CITY — For the third time since his arrest in 2003, a court will hold a competency hearing for the man charged in the 2002 abduction of Elizabeth Smart.
The 10-day hearing for Brian David Mitchell begins today. U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball will decide whether the former street preacher is competent to stand trial.
The hearing will be Mitchell’s first in federal court, but it’s a replay of state proceedings where Mitchell was twice deemed incompetent for trial.
Smart was 14 on June 5, 2002, when she was taken from her home at knifepoint and held captive for nine months. At an October hearing, Smart said she was forced to become Mitchell’s second wife in a religious ceremony and then raped.
