Overview
- The three-day competency hearing, which began Tuesday in federal court on Long Island, featured a defense neuropsychologist who called Jeffries severely impaired and noted a recording where he said, “You better find me incompetent.”
- Prosecutors point to a months-long evaluation at the federal medical center in Butner that found him fit for trial and they plan to call their own psychiatric experts and play recorded phone calls.
- Defense testimony described diagnoses of probable Alzheimer’s and Lewy body dementia with symptoms such as hallucinations, wandering, delusions, dream enactment, and disinhibited speech, worsened after a 2018 brain injury.
- Jeffries, 81, has pleaded not guilty to federal sex-trafficking and interstate prostitution charges tied to allegations that men were lured with modeling promises to drug-fueled sex parties in New York and the Hamptons, with penalties of 15 years to life if convicted.
- Jury selection is set for October 26 if he is found competent, and the hearing continues Wednesday as the court weighs whether he understands the charges and can assist his lawyers.