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Updated Jan. 9, 2004, 12:20 p.m. ET

One of Elizabeth Smart's accused kidnappers found incompetent to stand trial

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — One of the two people charged with kidnapping Elizabeth Smart from her Salt Lake City bedroom has been found incompetent to stand trial, a judge ruled Friday.

Wanda Barzee, 58, was ordered committed to the Utah State Hospital. Judge Judith Atherton said Barzee's competency would be reviewed at an April 15 hearing.

Two mental health experts had earlier found her not competent to stand trial. A hearing had been scheduled to contest those rulings, but Barzee earlier this week waived her right to contest the findings.

Barzee's attorneys, David Finlayson and Scott Williams, filed a motion Wednesday in which Barzee asked the court to rule "at its discretion" without an evidence hearing, though she did not agree with the experts who found her incompetent.

"I do not believe myself to be mentally ill or infirm or incompetent in the eyes of the Lord," she said in the court document.

She said the experts were unable to "understand the special nature of my relationship with God and my role as a minister and servant unto Him. ... Their inability to understand is also a result of their different belief system, and the influence of Satan's subtle powers on them."

Barzee and her husband, drifter and self-styled prophet Brian David Mitchell, 50, are charged with aggravated kidnapping, aggravated sexual assault and aggravated burglary in the June 5, 2002, abduction of Elizbeth, then 14.

They allegedly kept the girl as Mitchell's second wife for nine months in Utah and California. They were found March 12 about 15 miles south of Salt Lake City.

The couple also were charged in the attempted abduction of Elizabeth's 18-year-old cousin, Jessica Wright, seven weeks after Elizabeth, now 16, was taken.

Mitchell's mental competency hearings are scheduled for Jan. 27-28.



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