Based on his own interpretation of Wyoming state law, Joseph Underwood says he should be found incompetent to proceed on allegations that he murdered a woman and dumped her body outside Cody in 2019.

Following multiple mental evaluations, legal wrangling and various delays, Park County Circuit Court Judge Joey Darrah ruled this spring that Underwood is fit to stand trial — but only if some accommodations are made for the 49-year-old’s cognitive disabilities.

Underwood, however, argued last week that Darrah got it wrong.

“It doesn’t mention anywhere in the Wyoming statute that says if you have accommodations, you’re fit to proceed, sir,” Underwood told the judge. “I can’t find anything like that in [Wyoming Statute] 7-11-303, sir.”

Darrah noted that he’d already made a ruling and reaffirmed that the case is moving forward.

Complicated case history

In 2022, Underwood was found incompetent to face murder and other charges in Laramie County that directly related to the 2019 killing of 40-year-old Angela Elizondo in Cheyenne. However, with different experts and prosecutors and a different judge, Underwood has been found competent to stand trial in Park County for charges related to allegedly trying to hide Elizondo’s body south of Cody and having a standoff with police.

Underwood faces felony counts of concealing a crime and possession of a firearm while a felon, plus misdemeanor counts of interference with a peace officer and fleeing police. 

Every psychiatrist who’s evaluated Underwood in the wake of the murder has concluded he understands the charges, but they’ve generally expressed concern about his ability to keep up with courtroom proceedings in real time.

In-line with the experts’ recommendations, Darrah has approved a series of accommodations to help Underwood track what’s going on at an upcoming preliminary hearing. They include using simplified language, directing participants to speak more slowly, offering breaks, limiting access to the courtroom to minimize distractions and dimming the lights.

All of those accommodations were requested by Underwood’s court-appointed defense attorneys, Tim Blatt and Sam Krone, approved by the Wyoming Judicial Branch’s Americans with Disabilities Act coordinator and agreed to by Deputy Park County Prosecuting Attorney Jack Hatfield.

In need of an interpreter?

The only point of contention was a request for the court to appoint a mental health professional to assist Underwood.

Given that there’s no feasible way to monitor the accuracy of the assistance offered by a “process interpreter,” having the court provide one “could jeopardize its fairness and reliability of the judicial process,” wrote the branch’s ADA coordinator, Victor Payne. “The court’s role is to resolve legal disputes, not to provide mental health counseling.”

If the public defender’s office wants Underwood to have a mental health professional, Darrah said the defense will have to pay for the position on its own.

At a June 24 hearing on the accommodations, Blatt called a process interpreter “probably the most important condition,” and questioned whether Underwood could still be considered competent without one.

Hatfield shot back that, “as usual with the defense requests in this case, that’s ridiculous.”

“Mr. Underwood is continuing to pull the scam that he’s pulled for five years now,” the prosecutor argued. “There’s nothing wrong with him.”

Hatfield said appointing an interpreter would be a “waste of time” and “drag this out to become a further circus than it already has.”

Blatt countered that Hatfield isn’t a mental health professional and argued the prosecutor is the only one who thinks Underwood is feigning mental illness. 

Contesting his own competency

Every expert who’s evaluated Underwood in recent years has agreed he has real cognitive impairments that limit his ability to process things in real time. However, the state’s expert, Dr. Steven Nelson, also testified in March that he has a “strong concern that Mr. Underwood is either exaggerating or feigning some of the symptomatology that he’s presenting.” For example, Nelson said Underwood is alleged to have told other inmates that claiming amnesia helped him get out of the Laramie County charges.

Darrah concluded in April that Underwood was mentally fit to proceed on the Park County charge, but Underwood has objected to the ruling. In a pair of late April letters to the judge, Underwood complained that he “did not get a fair competency hearing” and said he was firing Blatt and Krone.

“When I get a new public defender, we will be contesting and or appealing the court[’s] decision of fit to proceed,” he wrote in part.

Despite Underwood’s threat to fire his court-appointed counsel, nothing appears to have come of it, as the two attorneys remain on the case.

Preliminary hearing may go slow

Darrah has set the preliminary hearing for July 22. Prosecutors will only need to demonstrate probable cause — a very low evidentiary bar — to get the charges forwarded to district court and toward a trial. 

As is typical, Hatfield intends to only call the investigating officer as a witness and Blatt indicated that he doesn’t think Underwood would have to have an interpreter for the relatively straightforward proceeding.

Blatt did express some concern about how he’ll handle “some of the issues that Mr. Underwood might bring up, if it’s as a result of mental health deficiencies or not,” but Darrah said he believes the defense attorneys will be able to communicate with Underwood about any issues.

“If he feels like he’s lost, he can give you guys a signal, and we can stop the hearing,” Darrah said, which will give the defendant more time to process what’s happening.

The judge assured the parties that, “we’ll take as much time as we need.”