Competent or not?

The second competency hearing for accused Elizabeth Smart kidnapper Brian David Mitchell is scheduled to resume Friday.

The hearing comes on the eve of the second anniversary of when Mitchell, now 51, and his wife Wanda Barzee, now 59, were found walking along State Street in Sandy with Smart, who had been missing for nine months and presumed by most people to be dead.

Since that time, the court proceedings against Mitchell have moved at a snail's pace.

Barzee was ruled to be incompetent to stand trial by 3rd District Judge Judith Atherton on Jan. 9, 2004. Mitchell's first competency hearing was delayed by a series of motions and appeals.

He was eventually ruled competent to stand trial Aug. 31, 2004, after the defense eventually decided to waive his competency hearing.

The next day, a state grand jury indictment of both defendants that had been kept secret for a year was unsealed. The indictment charged both with aggravated kidnapping, two counts of aggravated sexual assault, two counts of aggravated burglary and conspiracy to commit aggravated kidnapping. All of the charges are first-degree felonies except for the last, which is a second-degree felony.

But following what the defense characterized as increasingly delusional behavior by Mitchell, including a singing outburst in court, Atherton agreed to a second competency hearing.

That hearing began Feb. 16 and has gone longer than expected. During the first two days, the defense called doctors Jennifer L. Skeem and Stephen Golding to the witness stand. Golding was one of the two doctors chosen to evaluate Mitchell for the court. Skeem was hired privately by the defense.

Golding has twice found Mitchell incompetent to stand trial. Skeem, a former student of Golding at the University of Utah, originally found Mitchell competent but then changed her diagnosis following a six-hour interview with him at the Salt Lake County Jail in October.

When the hearing resumes on Friday, the defense will have the opportunity for final questioning of Golding. Then, the Salt Lake District Attorney's Office is expected to call Dr. Noel Gardner to the witness stand. Gardner has twice determined Mitchell is competent to stand trial.

Mitchell's mental capacity

Skeem, a forensic psychologist and an assistant professor of psychology and social behavior at the University of California, Irvine, said her primary diagnosis was that Mitchell suffered from delusional disorder.