LOUISVILLE, Ky. — An attorney for Gavin Perkins, who is charged with murder of his mother Ruth in 2018, asked for a competency evaluation Monday to see if Perkins is fit to stand trial.
Perkins was arrested on June 21, after the Attorney General's office got involved and brought a new murder charge in his five-year-old case.
Perkins was in court for an arraignment Monday, where he pleaded not guilty through his public defender Sheila Seadler. Perkins didn't say one word while in the courtroom.
"Mr. Perkins is not competent. He's been deemed to be not competent to stand trial, and he's not likely to obtain competence in the foreseeable future," Seadler said of Perkins.
"He will need to be evaluated for competency in the event that the court won't rely on the previous evaluations," Seadler said.
Seadler said the turnaround for a psych evaluation at the Kentucky Correctional Psychiatric Center in La Grange (KCPC) is roughly 12 months.
Perkins was initially arrested for his mother's killing in 2018, but his case was dismissed when he was found incompetent to stand trial twice between 2020 and 2021.
Perkins spent time at KCPC prior to being released on June 10.
WHAS11 reached out to a spokesperson that oversees KCPC to ask if Perkins' release meant he should be considered fit to stand trial, but we have not heard back as of this writing.
His siblings said in an interview that Perkins started to change when he came back from the military, and, according to them, he believed his mother was part of a plot by the government to kill him.
Seadler also asked for a bond reduction Monday, saying that Perkins had scored a "0" on both his flight risk calculation, and his risk of new criminal activity.
Judge Tish Morris denied, citing "the nature of the charges and the flight risk". The bond stayed at $500,000 full cash.
Next up for the case is a bond hearing on July 31 to argue whether or not the bond should be lowered. And then there will be a general pre-trial hearing on August 28.
WHAS11 reached out to the Attorney General's office to ask how Perkins could be tried again, and why the office felt this case would go any differently than the first case. The response was:
“Perkins was never tried for the crime of murder. The previous case you refer to, Commonwealth v. Gavin Perkins, was dismissed without prejudice, meaning the Commonwealth is free to bring the case to court again," spokesperson Shellie May said over email.
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