Bayapa Lingala will spend the rest of his life in a mental health facility.
AB Wire
Prosecutors have asked to dismiss a second-degree murder charge against a 78-year-old man from India with dementia, Bayapa Lingala, who is accused of stabbing his son-in-law to death in his Lincoln, Nebraska home in 2014.
The Lancaster County Attorney’s office is seeking to have Lingala committed to the Lincoln Regional Center following a judge’s finding last month that he is mentally incompetent to stand trial for killing Sujay Nooka, reported the Lincoln Journal Star.
Lingala likely will remain in the center for the rest of his life.
Lincoln police arrested him on Aug. 5, 2014, believing he stabbed Nooka at the end of a grandchild’s birthday party that night in the home they all shared. Nooka, 46, died later at the hospital.
For more than a year, Lingala has been at the Regional Center as doctors worked with him in an attempt to restore his competency.
At a March 30 hearing, Lancaster County District Judge Susan Strong found that Lingala is not competent and that it is unlikely he can be restored in the foreseeable future, based on evaluations by multiple psychologists.
In December, after doctors reported that Lingala’s mental health had declined and his cognitive abilities were expected to worsen, Deputy Lancaster County Attorney Eric Miller asked to delay a competency hearing to get another opinion, reported the Journal Star.
At the March hearing, Miller said Dr. Mario Scalora, a psychologist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, agreed with Drs. Klaus Hartman and Jennifer Cimpl Bohn of the Regional Center.
Scalora examined Lingala along with a psychiatrist who speaks Telugu, and came to the conclusion that he wasn’t able to understand the charges against him or assist in his defense.
He recommended Lingala continue with in-patient treatment in a secured forensic facility. Strong gave Miller two weeks to file a civil commitment or Lingala would be released.
By state law, once a judge determines there is not a substantial probability that a person accused of a crime will become competent within the foreseeable future, the state must either begin a civil commitment proceeding to commit the person for an indefinite period or release the person.
Last Friday, Miller filed a motion seeking to drop the criminal case, and Lancaster County Judge Thomas Fox dismissed it. Later in the day, Deputy Lancaster County Public Defender Webb Bancroft said he expects Lingala will be in a secured environment for the rest of his life.
He said there are myriad factors that make him think Lingala is not getting better — age, mental health and dementia among them.
“This is obviously a tragedy of immense proportion to the family,” Bancroft said. “Time spent with the number of mental health professionals obviously resulted in a finding that will get Mr. Lingala the appropriate and necessary level of care that he needs. And our hope would be that the family can find some closure from it.”
Lingala faced at least 70 years in jail, if he were to be convicted.