Stanford competent for trial, government says

R. Allen Stanford (Bloomberg News)
(Updates with filing from Stanford’s attorneys.)

Government prosecutors say jailed former billionaire R. Allen Stanford is competent to stand trial next month. Attorneys for the U.S. Justice Department will argue at a hearing next week that Stanford’s trial, coming almost three years after the collapse of his financial empire, should go forward.

Stanford, who has been in custody since his arrest in 2009, became addicted to painkillers while recovering from injuries sustained in a fight with another inmate. At the time, doctors determined that Stanford was unable to understand the 14 criminal charges pending against him.

He was set to a treatment program at the Bureau of Prisons’ facility in Butner, N.C. On Nov. 4, eight months after he entered the program, Stanford was released after doctors determined he had “regained his competence.”

Stanford’s attorneys, in a separate court filing today, argue that he “suffered a traumatic brain injury due to the assault” and that the “cocktail of medications” administered to him in prison exacerbated his medical condition.

Prosecutors claim that Stanford is faking his memory loss, which he claims has essentially erased all memories of his life before the prison assault.

For much of his time in Butner, Stanford was “alert, lucid and oriented,” and as recently as September he exhibited no difficulty in discussing recent world news, the government said in its filing.

As a result, the government claims Stanford’s “cognitive abilities are not significantly impaired.”

Stanford, who has maintained his innocence, is accused of running a massive international Ponzi scheme that bilked as many as 20,000 investors out of more than $7 billion