Ohio school shooting suspect TJ Lane found competent to stand trial for deadly rampage

TJ Lane, 17, appears in Juvenile Court in Chardon, Ohio, May 2, 2012. / AP Photo

(AP) CHARDON, Ohio - The teenager charged in a deadly Ohio school shooting is mentally competent to stand trial in the deaths of three students, a judge ruled Wednesday.

Judge Timothy Grendell in Geauga County Juvenile Court heard from the prosecution and a lawyer for 17-year-old TJ Lane before making his decision. The consideration of the mental competency issue delayed a hearing on whether Lane would be tried as an adult.

Lane was charged in the Feb. 27 Chardon High School rampage that also left two students seriously wounded. Police said he opened fire in the cafeteria in the school east of Cleveland, though the motive was unclear.

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The charges filed against him include three counts of aggravated murder and two counts of attempted aggravated murder.

Under a new state law, a child can be found competent only if he or she is able to grasp the seriousness of the charges and able to understand the proceedings. The law says a child with a mental illness or an intellectual or developmental disability may not be found competent.

Geauga County Prosecutor David Joyce has said that Lane is "not well" but did not elaborate.

The judge ordered a mental competency exam for Lane about a month after the shooting without offering further explanation.

[taxed01]

He only killed three people. Are you sure he can stand trial? Maybe he was having a bad hair day. Maybe his parents spanked him when he was a child. Maybe he was having a rough day. Maybe he was on drugs. There must be at least a dozen politically correct reasons why it was OK to kill those people.

[krmcintyr]

He chose to do what he did, and he should pay for it. In my opinion, he should never be a free man.

[StreetGlideMan]

I guess I am a simple man. If you are "competent" to locate a gun, locate the ammunition, load the gun, transport the loaded gun to the people you intend to injure and/or kill, and then shoot those people with the gun, then to me, you are "competent" to stand trial for having used the gun to injure and/or kill in the first place. Why have we made this concept to hard to understand? It is stuff like this that makes me doubt the strength of our legal system.

[askagain]

Whatever happened to the standard that simply requires that 1) people understand the charges against them and that 2) people be capable of understanding right from wrong? We are making the system to complicated and unwieldly. This kid killed two people and a judge finds him competent to stand trial. How much more do reasonable people need to know? And how many people think releasing him from custody at age 21 is a good idea?

[karenlynn33]

I realize that the families of the victims in this case have experienced a tremendous loss, but somehow TJ is also a victim of a family, school, society and mental health system not working properly in the past and not working properly now. How can a child with obvious mental illness be found competent when the law clearly states that mentally ill children cannot be found competent. Obviously TJ is mentally ill. Such a sad situation all the way around for everyone.