PRESCOTT - Zachary Sutton, who had previously been found competent to stand trial for first-degree murder after treatment in Yavapai County's Restoration to Competency (RTC) program, is not able to participate in his own defense, according to an RTC report reversing a previous RTC diagnosis, and will go back for further treatment, a judge ruled Thursday.
In January 2011, the body of Cary L. Johnson, 44, was found in the burnt-out bedroom of a house in the 700 block of Campbell Avenue. A spokesman for the Prescott Police Department said Johnson, Sutton's girlfriend, died from multiple stab wounds before the fire started.
Lt. Andy Reinhardt said detectives arrested Sutton after he reportedly admitted "to detectives that he killed her prior to starting the fire."
Sutton had been examined and diagnosed as incompetent to participate in his own defense. He completed the RTC program and was found competent in August.
However, his attorney, Robert Gundacker, has been arguing that Sutton was not, in fact, ready for trial. He argued, unsuccessfully, that the RTC treatment team was not qualified to make that judgment.
Thursday's hearing would have allowed him to advance that theory, but the point became moot when Yavapai County Superior Court Judge Tina Ainley said she had seen a supplemental memorandum from the head of the RTC program, Dr. Joseph Stewart, saying that he now agreed with other RTC doctors' diagnoses that Sutton was not competent after all.
Ainley sent him back to the program, saying that, although she finds him incompetent now, there is a "likelihood of restoration."
Gundacker said, "In my opinion, they've (the RTC staff) observed what we always thought was true."
Asked if he believed his arguments had influenced the RTC doctors to do another analysis of Sutton, Gundacker shook his head.
"They give the words of a defense attorney no credence whatsoever," he said.
A new report on Sutton's condition should be complete and in Ainley's hands within 60 days.
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