El Cajon

Three psychiatrists were appointed Wednesday to again evaluate the mental competency of a Lebanese man facing his third sanity trial in the fatal 1985 shootings of five family members in El Cajon.

A mistrial was declared Monday by San Diego Superior Court Judge Terry O’Rourke in the case of Toufic Naddi, 48. The psychiatrists were ordered to report back to the court about Naddi’s mental status.

Naddi was convicted June 8, 1988, of five first-degree murder counts in the June 1, 1985, slayings of his wife, her parents, her cousin, and her brother-in-law in her parents’ house in El Cajon.

The jury deadlocked 11-1 that Naddi was sane, which forced a retrial on the sanity issue.

On Aug. 8, a second mistrial was declared by O’Rourke after he ruled that Deputy Dist. Atty. Bob Boles’ comments during closing arguments, about the execution of Lt. Col. William Higgins in Lebanon by terrorists, were prejudicial.

Jury selection resumed last month in Naddi’s third trial, but that was aborted Monday after the ruling by O’Rourke involving Naddi’s mental competence.

An Oct. 30 hearing was scheduled before O’Rourke to hear the psychiatric reports.

Naddi has been found mentally incompetent once before and was sent to a state mental hospital in 1986, but he recovered and was returned to San Diego for trial. Two juries have decided he was mentally competent to stand trial before the 1988 criminal trial.