SAN ANTONIO – A competency trial was held Wednesday for a black man accused of stomping his cellmate, a member of a white supremacist gang, to death in May.
Prosecutors want to try Shandrick Buckley, who was originally in the Bexar County Jail on a separate murder charge, for capital murder in the death of Alexander Wise, 29. One of Buckley's defense attorneys argued that he’s not competent to stand trial.
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But during a Wednesday hearing, the presiding judge said that a doctor found Buckley competent to stand trial, a decision his lawyer said he plans to fight.
On May 30, Sheriff Javier Salazar said deputies found Wise bleeding profusely and unconscious in a cell he was sharing with Buckley at the Bexar County Jail.
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Wise, who Salazar said was believed to have been a former member of the Aryan Brotherhood, later succumbed to his injuries.
Buckley's lawyer disagreed with the doctor's judgment and had asked that a jury make that determination.
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"He's been evaluated for competency and we've had the opportunity to review that evaluation we have requested a trial on that issue of competency and we have an absolute right to do that. So, we have requested that trial on competency and the court will assign a particular date when we are to have that trial," Buckley's lawyer told KSAT.
The competency trial date has to be coordinated with the doctor who did the evaluation, the lawyers and the court.