MONTGOMERY COUNTY — The attorney for Stephen Marlow, the accused in the 2022 Butler Twp. quadruple homicide, is calling for the trial judge to not blindly accept a doctor’s opinion that Marlow now is competent for trial.
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“He’s not yet been declared competent to stand trial,” defense attorney Dennis Lieberman said to News Center 7′s Mike Campbell on Thursday. “It’s simply an opinion.”
Police and the Montgomery County Prosecutor’s Office believe Marlow is responsible for gunning down four people in a Butler Twp. neighborhood in August 2022. Marlow has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity in the killings of Sarah Anderson, her 15-year-old daughter Kayla, as well as Clyde and Eva Knox. Marlow was apprehended in Kansas a day after the killings.
The trial judge has declared Marlow incompetent, but restorable, and sent him to treatment at the Summit Behavioral Health Center near Cincinnati.
The prosecutor in the case believes the treatment for Marlow has been enough to send him back to Montgomery County for trial.
But Lieberman said Marlow’s diagnosis, schizophrenia, should keep him at Summit and notes the psychiatrist hired to evaluate his client is considering changing the diagnosis to delusional disorder.
For now, Marlow will remain at Summit until the trial judge decides whether to accept the doctor’s opinion on the defendant’s competency.
The next scheduled pre-trial hearing is to discuss the status of the case and to set dates for future pre-trial hearings. Marlow’s competency is not a topic of any of those hearings, according to court papers filed in the case.