Mitchell hearing ends with 2 sides split over competency to stand trial

After 10 days, almost 30 witnesses and hours of testimony, the federal competency hearing of accused Elizabeth Smart kidnapper Brian David Mitchell concluded on Friday.

For two weeks, prosecutors have painted a picture of a manipulative, cunning, intelligent, articulate and often times loud former street preacher who used religion as a way to obtain sex. He is a man who can turn his religious persona on and off at will, just as he has the capacity to sit in a courtroom without singing if he chooses, they say.

The defense has portrayed Mitchell as a man who has had psychotic tendencies since he was a teenager, due in part to his family history, who later in life "fell off a cliff" with his delusions. They say he is a man with a psychotic disorder who believes he is under tremendous pressure to do God's will and is constantly looking for "signs."

Mitchell believes he needs to go to trial, be convicted and sent to prison so he can suffer as Jesus Christ did, before God will free him and allow him to deliver the children of Israel out of darkness, according to the defense.

Mitchell is accused of kidnapping and raping Elizabeth Smart in 2002, taking her to California, and then returning to Utah where he was arrested in 2003. A ruling on his competence may not come until early next year.

"I feel confident that he will be found competent," Ed Smart, Elizabeth's father, said after the hearing.

A large number of Elizabeth Smart's relatives, her parents, uncles, aunts, grandparents and siblings — including her sister Mary Katherine, now 17, who provided investigators with the key piece of information in 2003 that eventually led to Mitchell's arrest — attended Friday's hearing as a show of support.

"What happened, to me, this week was the trial," Ed Smart said. "There is not a question of whether he is guilty or not. (Mitchell) is as guilty as they come."

Also in attendance for much of the two-week hearing was Mitchell's stepdaughter from his second marriage, Rebecca Woodridge.

"I believe he is incompetent and needs help," she said. "He is a sick man. I do not believe this is an act."

Woodridge admitted that she was molested by Mitchell as a child, but that she had forgiven him and he was not a sexual deviant. She believes the prosecution's portrayal of her stepfather was a bit "harsh and judgmental" and said not all the facts came out. Although she said it didn't excuse his actions, she believes Mitchell was a product of an abusive childhood in which he was sexually abused himself.