The man who admitted to killing three people and wounding nine others at a Planned Parenthood facility in November 2015 has been found incompetent to stand trial.
A judge made the ruling Wednesday afternoon, saying Dear is "not rational" and "not grounded in reality." The 57-year-old has repeatedly had outbursts in court, calling himself a "warrior for the babies" during his first appearance.
Before the judge took the bench on Wednesday, Dear shouted out "Anybody want to know why I did it?"
At that point, a victim's family member interrupted him and said "because you're an inbred!" Dear responded that it was because of Psalm 149.
This led a sheriff's deputy to go to the front of the courtroom and stop the exchange -- something that hasn't occurred during this entire process.
While Dear was being escorted out of the courtroom, he called the judge a "filthy animal."
Dear will be treated at the state mental hospital in Pueblo. A written review of his progress will be sent to the judge every 90 days. When the report is finished, both the prosecution and defense can contest whatever the finding is.
Either side is also allowed to have their own experts, psychologists, psychiatrists and doctors meet with the defendant and come to their own conclusions.
"Competency is a determination of the defendant's current mental status," El Paso County District Attorney Dan May said. "Nobody has ever said he's permanently incompetent. We've had a number of cases ... in this jurisdiction and across the state where people have been found incompetent at the time to proceed with their case, but they had been restored to competency after being sent down to the state hospital.
"There are cases where people have been found permanently incompetent," May added. "Those are rare situations."
The judge's full order said that two experts who spoke to Dear diagnosed him with a delusional disorder. His evaluation found that his "knowledge of the factual workings of the judicial process were hampered considerably by his sometimes tangentially-related blanket assertions that the actions of various courtroom personnel were being orchestrated by higher authority."
The mental health experts who evaluated Dear said he had delusions for many years, and many of them revolved around the belief the case was being influenced by the federal government and that the FBI was following him.
During an interview with a Colorado Springs detective, Dear said -- among other things -- that he believed his girlfriend was working for the Feds, the FBI had been leaving "feathers at his house," that Princess Diana's death was a professional hit and that God told him to make a statement, according to court documents released Wednesday afternoon.
In the past, the shooter’s public defender asked the judge to commit the man to a psychiatric institution.
Dear has been largely uncooperative with his public defenders. According to court documents, he said he believed they were also corroborating with the Feds and Planned Parenthood.
"Mr. Dear's delusional thinking and subsequent impaired reasoning appeared to be the direct result of serious mental illness that is interfering with his ability to make well-reasoned choices regarding his legal options," the evaluation reads. "Given the significant length of time that he appears to have been operating under the control of his delusional belief system, his symptoms are highly unlikely to spontaneously remit."
