United States v. Joel Dreyer

Opinion by Judge REINHARDT; Dissent by Judge CALLAHAN.

OPINION

At the age of 63, Joel Dreyer experienced the onset of frontotemporal dementia, a degenerative brain disorder that causes changes in personality and behavior, impairs social interactions, and causes disinhibition and a loss of insight and impulse control. He was a practicing psychiatrist at the time. From the age of 66 to 69, despite having no criminal history, Dreyer participated in a conspiracy to distribute controlled substances, and in December 2010, at the age of 73, he was sentenced to ten years imprisonment after he pleaded guilty to charges related to that conspiracy.

At the sentencing hearing, the district court was provided with three expert reports: all three diagnosed Dreyer with frontotemporal dementia and noted that he exhibited textbook manifestations of the condition since its apparent onset in 2001, three years before his participation in the controlled substance conspiracy, and that his symptoms persisted into the present. Dreyer did not allocute at sentencing and defense counsel informed the court that his client would not address it due to the dementia’s effect on his behavior. Defense counsel…

dissenting:

I respectfully dissent. I cannot agree that it was plain error for the district court not to sua sponte order a competency hearing after Joel Dreyer pleaded guilty and received the benefit of his plea agreement but before sentencing. Dreyer was represented by competent counsel and had been examined by a number of doctors. Although all agreed that he suffered from frontotemporal dementia (“FTD”), none opined that Dreyer was not competent to participate in his sentencing. Moreover, although Dreyer chose not to allocute, he was responsive when the district judge addressed him personally, stating that he respected the judge and appreciated her comments. Even if the trial judge might have issued a sua sponte order for further psychiatric and medical evaluations, failure to do so was not plain error. Moreover, *815 the majority’s unrequested reassignment of the case on remand to another judge is contrary to our norm of remanding to the original sentencing judge and is unsupported in fact or law.

I do not question the majority’s genuine doubt regarding Dreyer’s competence. However, this does not allow it to substitute its opinion for what a reasonable judge would be…

BACKGROUND

Dreyer experienced a medical emergency in 2001 that coin- cided with the onset of frontotemporal dementia. Immediately after being released from the hospital, Dreyer’s family noticed significant changes in his personality and behavior. Within a few years Dreyer ended his previously-happy marriage to his wife of 17 years, engaged in uncharacteristic behavior and withdrew from his family to such a degree that friends and relatives concluded that he was exhibiting early signs of demen- tia.1 Despite the family’s concerns, his illness remained undiagnosed. In 2004, the 66-year-old Dreyer, a licensed psy- chiatrist, began providing prescriptions of oxycodone and hydrocodone to patients outside of the usual course of profes- sional practice. In 2007 Dreyer was indicted on charges related to his participation in a conspiracy to possess and to distribute controlled substances. Although Dreyer had diffi- culty recognizing or admitting that his actions were inconsis- tent with professional standards of conduct, he nonetheless pleaded guilty in September 2009 to two counts of the thirty count indictment. 1 Dreyer’s family recounted a number of instances in which he behaved in…