Beginning of Competency Trial Ordered for Man Accused of Killing 2 Cellmates

Jury selection will begin today in a trial to determine whether Jerry Thomas Pick is mentally competent to stand trial for the murder of two of his cellmates at Orange County Jail, a judge ruled Tuesday.

Pick, 24, who has a history of mental illness, appeared briefly in a Santa Ana courtroom Tuesday with his wrists cuffed together and a heavy metal chain around his waist.

He told Orange County Superior Court Judge Leonard H. McBride that he wanted to fire attorney Milton C. Grimes, a request that was denied last month by another judge.

“He works for the devil,” Pick said of Grimes. “He’s a liar, and that’s all there is to it.”

But McBride, who told Pick that he doubted Grimes had anything but his client’s best interest at heart, declined to take the matter beyond briefly closing the courtroom to discuss it. He also denied a defense request to delay the competency trial and scheduled jury selection for today.

Pick is accused of the Jan. 17 murder of John Frank Wilcox, 71, and the slaying of Arthur Oviedo, 25, two weeks later. Each of them had shared the medical observation cell with him. At the time of the killings, Pick was awaiting trial on a robbery charge.

Wilcox, who had been jailed for violating probation by refusing to check into the Veterans Administration Hospital in Long Beach, suffered from emphysema and had been diagnosed as mentally ill. Prosecutors allege that Pick, annoyed with Wilcox’s babbling and constant spitting, kicked him to death.

Prosecutors say that Oviedo, who was jailed on charges of assaulting a Fullerton police officer, was strangled by Pick with shoelaces. Oviedo was sharing the medical cell with Pick after county medical officials diagnosed him as “gravely disabled” and gave him mood-stabilizing drugs.

Grimes, acting as Pick’s attorney, has argued that his client’s mental disorder makes him incompetent to stand trial in the murders. He said that since an accident in 1981, when Pick was involved in a car crash on the night of his senior prom, Pick has suffered severe mental problems. A constant head twitch, according to the defense attorney, is a result of that accident.

However, Deputy Dist. Atty. Bryan F. Brown, who is prosecuting the case, said that while it is clear that Pick “is not playing with a full deck,” he is capable of understanding the central issues in the case and of aiding his attorney in his defense.

Brown said jailhouse incidents of violence and destruction of property, mentioned in court by Grimes as indicators of Pick’s unbalanced mental state, have been staged by Pick in a bid to manipulate prison officials to move him to another cell.

Grimes, who earlier told The Times that Pick had admitted kicking Wilcox while he was in the medical observation cell, refused to comment on the case Tuesday.