DC man found incompetent to stand trial in stabbing of Rand Paul aide, unlikely to be prosecuted

A mentally ill man has been found incompetent to stand trial in the stabbing of an aide for Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul, and is unlikely to be prosecuted.

Glynn Neal, 44, received 10 examinations by psychiatrists hired by defense attorneys and prosecutors, D.C. Superior Court Judge Todd E. Edelman said Wednesday, and he will probably never be mentally competent enough to understand the nature of a criminal trial and assist in his defense, The Washington Post reported. He believed he had already been found guilty and sentenced.

Edelman read from various reports that Neal suffered from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. He had been found incompetent to stand trial before.

“There are no prospects that Mr. Neal will return to competency in the foreseeable future,” Edelman said.

The judge ordered that the criminal case against Neal be put on hold, and for him to remain at the D.C.-run psychiatric facility St. Elizabeths Hospital, where he has been held since his arrest in 2023. If treatment specialists and a judge determine that Neal has become mentally competent to stand trial in the future, then prosecutors could revive the criminal case.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Alex Cook told Edelman that he did not oppose the finding. Neal’s public defender, Molly Bunke, also agreed with the ruling, and has repeatedly argued in court that her client was not competent for a trial.

There will be civil hearings for Neal, during which the office of the D.C. attorney general will determine how long he can remain at the hospital and whether he should be transferred to another long-term mental health facility out of the area. The hearing is scheduled for July 17.

Neal was charged with assault with intent to kill in the March 25, 2023, stabbing of Phillip Todd, then 26, an aide to Paul. Todd was stabbed multiple times in his head and chest at midday while he and another man were leaving a restaurant, resulting in a brain bleed and punctured lung, which required several surgeries, prosecutors said.

When Neal was arrested hours after the stabbing, according to court charging documents, he told detectives that “a voice was telling him that someone was going to get him for all the things he [had] done. So, he was waiting right there to get the someone.”

Neal had been released from prison on supervised probation a day before the attack, after being convicted in 2011 for obstructing justice, making threats to kidnap or injure a person, and forcing a person into prostitution.