United States v. Boima

114 F.4th 69
Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit·Decided August 22, 2024·No. 23-6115·Published

Opinion

23-6115 United States v. Boima

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT

August Term 2023

(Argued: March 1, 2024 Decided: August 22, 2024)

No. 23-6115

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Appellee

-v.-

SAMUEL BOIMA

Defendant-Appellant.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Before: LIVINGSTON, Chief Judge, SULLIVAN, and MENASHI, Circuit Judges.

Defendant-Appellant Samuel Boima (“Boima”) appeals from an order authorizing the Bureau of Prisons forcibly to medicate him to restore his competency to stand trial on the charge that he assaulted federal officers engaged in the performance of official duties, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 111(a)(1). After finding Boima incompetent to stand trial, the United States District Court for the Western District of New York, David G. Larimer, J., ordered the involuntary administration of psychotropic medication to Boima to restore his competency. Because the district court failed to consider and make a finding as to all four factors

in Sell v. United States, 539 U.S. 166 (2003), the district court’s order is vacated and the matter is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

FOR DEFENDANT-APPELLANT: MARTIN J. VOGELBAUM, Assistant Federal Public Defender, Buffalo, New York.

FOR APPELLEE: SEAN ELDRIDGE, Assistant United States Attorney (Tiffany H. Lee, Assistant United States Attorney, on the brief), for Trini E. Ross, United States Attorney, Western District of New York, Buffalo, New York.

PER CURIAM:

Defendant-Appellant Samuel Boima appeals from a January 19, 2023 order of the United States District Court for the Western District of New York (Larimer, J.) granting the government’s motion forcibly to administer antipsychotic medication to render Boima competent to stand trial. On appeal, Boima argues that the district court failed to make the first of the four findings required to issue such an order under Sell v. United States, 539 U.S. 166 (2003): that the government has an important interest in his prosecution. Boima further contends that the government lacks such an interest, foreclosing his involuntary medication. For the reasons set forth herein, we agree with Boima that the order authorizing his forced medication does not reflect a determination by the district court that important governmental interests are at stake in his prosecution. Accordingly, we VACATE

the order and REMAND so that the district court may in the first instance conduct the requisite analysis consistent with this opinion.

I. BACKGROUND

A. The Complaint and Initial Appearance On July 20, 2020, the government filed a criminal complaint accusing Boima, a native and citizen of Sierra Leone, of assaulting two officers at the Buffalo Federal Detention Facility (“BFDF”) in Batavia, New York, where he was detained pending deportation pursuant to a final order of removal. The complaint alleges that on May 25, 2020, the officers responded to an altercation between Boima and another detainee. Boima became “actively resistant and verbally combative” when the officers handcuffed and escorted him to the Special Housing Unit (“SHU”), where he was to be held pending an investigation. App’x 16. When the officers placed Boima in a cell in the SHU, ordered him to remain on the bunk until they exited, and then turned to leave, Boima spat a mixture of saliva and blood on one officer’s uniform jacket and duty belt, and on the other’s uniform shirt, pants, duty belt, and bare neck. The officers secured Boima’s cell door “without further incident.” App’x 16.

The complaint charges an assault on federal officers engaged in the performance of official duties, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 111(a)(1). The charge is a

Class D felony that carries a statutory maximum sentence of eight years’ imprisonment. 18 U.S.C. § 111(a)(2).

Boima was first scheduled to appear on the complaint on July 27, 2020, but the date of his first appearance was repeatedly scheduled and rescheduled by the court (Payson, M.J.) because Boima refused to cooperate with efforts to bring him from BFDF to the federal courthouse in Rochester, New York. At the fourth scheduled initial appearance, on August 10, 2020, Boima appeared by video. Boima immediately began to rant—alleging false imprisonment, adamantly denying that criminal charges were pending against him or that he was represented by his counsel of record, and concluding that “I need you -- the family members involved that want money or whatever amount of money that they spent on this situation [--] I need ya’ll to leave me alone and stop touching me.” App’x 46. Magistrate Judge Payson noted that she had “never encountered any defendant who has been so resistant and noncooperative with an initial appearance.” App’x 59. On August 14, after providing notice to the parties and an opportunity to submit information to the court, she ordered a psychological examination pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 4241(a) to determine Boima’s competency to stand trial. Boima was removed from immigration custody and admitted to the

Metropolitan Correctional Center (“MCC”), a federal detention facility in New York City.

B. Competency Examination and Hearing After receiving an evaluation report from Dr. Kari Schlessinger, who was a forensic psychologist at the MCC before becoming chief psychologist at the Metropolitan Detention Facility in Brooklyn, New York in 2021, Magistrate Judge Payson conducted a competency hearing on June 2, 2021. In her report, Dr. Schlessinger noted that Boima, throughout his detention at the MCC, was “generally uncooperative” and “often illogical and highly agitated.” App’x 116. She testified at the hearing that Boima presented as “psychotic with paranoid features” and that he “didn’t believe that he had a court case, rather he believed he had been kidnapped.” App’x 100. Although unable to diagnose him with a specific psychotic disorder as a result, inter alia, of his “guarded and evasive demeanor,” Dr. Schlessinger assessed in her report that Boima appeared to be “actively psychotic” with “unspecified schizophrenia spectrum and other

psychotic disorder.” App’x 115–16. Dr. Schlessinger concluded in both her report and her testimony that Boima was not competent to stand trial. 1 Based on Dr. Schlessinger’s testimony, Magistrate Judge Payson issued a Report and Recommendation concluding that the district court should find Boima incompetent to stand trial. The magistrate judge recommended committing Boima to Federal Bureau of Prisons (“BOP”) custody for a period not to exceed four months to determine “whether there is a substantial probability that in the foreseeable future” he would return to competency. App’x 118–19 (citing 18 U.S.C. § 4241(d)(1)). Neither party objected, and the district court (Larimer, J.) issued a Decision and Order in July 2021 that adopted the Report and Recommendation and found Boima incompetent to stand trial. The district court ordered Boima hospitalized for an assessment of whether he might attain the capacity to stand trial. As a result, Boima was admitted to the Federal Medical Center in Butner, North Carolina (“FMC Butner”) on December 21, 2021.

1She further indicated that “spontaneous remission” was “very unlikely” without psychotropic medication, but that Boima was unlikely to take such medication voluntarily. App’x 108–09. In her report, she also indicated that she could not rule out whether Boima was suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (“PTSD”).

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