Oversight hearing set for man behind 2001 Tulsa postal worker slaying

Source: Tulsa World, Okla.迷利倉Jan. 02--A hearing has been scheduled to consider whether to end court oversight of a man who was found not guilty by reason of insanity in the December 2001 killing of a local postal worker.Jason M. Weed agreed with prosecutors in August 2002 that he committed second-degree murder by killing 30-year-old Robert W. Jenkins of Broken Arrow. Jenkins was shot to death Dec. 12, 2001, while making his postal rounds at what was then known as the Place One apartments, 3200 Riverside Drive.On Tuesday, U.S. Senior District Judge Terence Kern set a March 11 hearing to consider the defense's motion to terminate the conditions of release that Kern ordered Weed to follow in October 2005.Jenkins' mother, Jeanne Been, said this week that she wants the court to continue to monitor Weed. "Otherwise, he's getting away with murder," she said.In August 2002, Weed acknowledged "that at the time of the offense the defendant was suffering from a mental disorder that rendered him unable to appreciate the nature, quality or wrongfulness of his actions during the time period of the offense."Assistant U.S. Attorney Doug Horn said analysis of Weed by five mental health experts from as far away as Los Angeles and Cambridge, Mass., as well as an exhaustive investigation, led prosecutors to the same conclusion: that Weed was insane at the time of the killing.Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott Woodward, who is now handling the matter for the prosecution, said this week that this has been "a one-of-a-kind case. None of us had been in this territory before.""It's an enigma," said Woodward, who said it's still true that nobody knows for certain what caused Weed to shoot Jenkins.Kern reviewed the case in May 2003 and chose not to release Weed from custody then.However, the warden of a federal medical center in Butner, N.C., where Weed had been in custody, reported in a May 2005 letter that "Mr. Weed's treatment team believes his current mental status warrants his conditional release under a regimen of care and treatment."Federal Public Defender Julia O'Connell told the court in October 2005 that tests Weed completed while imprisoned showed that he had no psychopathic tendencies and posed a low risk of future violence.Kern said in October 2005 that he was relying on the opinions of mental-health experts in setting a series of conditions to minimize any danger Weed might pose to the public.Among those conditions, Weed, now 39, was to find a job that would not interfere "with normal sleep patterns or cause sleep deprivation" and to regularly report to probation officers.Also, he was ordered not to possess firearms or use alcohol or illegal drugs, including stero迷你倉ds. He was to stay out of the 11 counties that make up the Tulsa-based Northern District of Oklahoma unless he gained permission from the court, and he was ordered to not "loiter about" any U.S. Postal Service facility, including the one at 6910 S. Yorktown Ave., which was named posthumously for Jenkins.O'Connell said this week that the court has held regular status hearings in the case. Woodward said there have been no significant problems with Weed while he has been under supervision.Woodward didn't divulge any specifics, and many entries in the official court record of the case are sealed. He did say that any issues Weed has had while under supervision involved "minor things -- things that didn't involve violence."At the time of the October 2005 order, Weed was ordered into a "psychiatric halfway house" or similar facility. However, the order allowed for his eventual release, and it is unclear from the still largely sealed record whether he still lives in such a place.Neither Woodward nor O'Connell would comment about that.Been said this week that the outcome of the case "never set well with me." She said she is "not going to be happy" if Kern opts to end all court oversight of Weed.She said she hopes Kern decides: "No, he killed a person in cold blood, and we're not going to just drop it."The hearing concerning the defense's motion for termination of Weed's conditional release had been scheduled for Jan. 8. However, Kern opted to delay it by more than two months after O'Connell filed an unopposed motion Monday asking for more time so an evaluation and report about Weed can be completed.Woodward said this week that instead of stopping all supervision "cold turkey," Kern could also decide to gradually diminish court oversight of Weed over a period of time or to maintain the status quo.During an August 2002 hearing, Weed apologized to Jenkins' family and said that "if someone were to take someone from me like that, it truly would take the grace of God for me to forgive them."While acknowledging the heartbreak that Jenkins' family has experienced, Woodward said this week that Weed's plight has a certain nightmarish quality, as well."Imagine waking up in a cell, being told that you just killed someone and having no memory of it," he said.Back in 2005, Woodward unsuccessfully asked Kern to keep Weed in custody. This time, Woodward said, "my intention is to defer to the court."Making such difficult decisions "is what we pay judges to do," he said.David Harper 918-581-8359david.harper@tulsaworld.comCopyright: ___ (c)2014 Tulsa World (Tulsa, Okla.) Visit Tulsa World (Tulsa, Okla.) at .tulsaworld.com Distributed by MCT Information Services自存倉