United States v. Coad

── United States v. Coad ── Court: Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit Date: May 11, 2026 Category: General Appellate Case: 25-1034 Document: 55-1 Date Filed: 05/11/2026 Page: 1 FILED United States Court of Appeals PUBLISH Tenth Circuit UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS May 11, 2026 Christopher M. Wolpert FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT Clerk of Court _________________________________ UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellee, v. No. 25-1034 JOHN STERLING COAD, Defendant - Appellant. _________________________________ Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Colorado (D.C. No. 1:23-CR-00077-PAB-1) _________________________________ John C. Arceci, Assistant Federal Public Defender (Virginia L. Grady, Federal Public Defender, with him on the briefs), Denver, Colorado, for Defendant- Appellant. J. Bishop Grewell, Assistant United States Attorney (Peter McNeilly, United States Attorney, and Marissa R. Miller, Assistant United States Attorney, on the brief), Denver, Colorado, for Plaintiff-Appellee. _________________________________ Before HOLMES, Chief Judge, PHILLIPS, and CARSON, Circuit Judges. _________________________________ PHILLIPS, Circuit Judge. _________________________________ Under 18 U.S.C. §§ 4241 and 4246, if a district court finds a criminal defendant incompetent and unable to be restored to competency for trial, the court can order the defendant’s temporary hospitalization for an evaluation, and  Appellate Case: 25-1034 Document: 55-1 Date Filed: 05/11/2026 Page: 2 possible certification, of his risk of bodily injury to another person or serious damage to property upon release. John Coad is one such defendant. Since 2007, he has repeatedly written violent and sexually explicit letters to a female prosecutor from one of his state criminal cases. Based on the contents of the letters, a federal grand jury indicted him on four counts of mailing threatening communications. After being alerted by the parties about Coad’s likely incompetency, the district court held a hearing at which it found Coad incompetent to proceed to trial. Then, as directed by statute, the court committed Coad to the Attorney General’s custody for treatment at a government hospital to try to restore him to competency. Within the statutory four-month period in which to assess whether Coad had a substantial probability of attaining competency, a government psychologist advised the district court that not only did Coad have a substantial probability of being restored to competency with antipsychotic and mood- stabilizing drugs, but that the hospital had already succeeded in restoring him. That being so, the hospital’s director certified to the court that Coad was competent for trial and would remain competent if he continued to take the prescribed drugs. Upon Coad’s discharge from the hospital, the Attorney General returned him to pretrial detention. After leaving the hospital, Coad stopped taking the needed drugs. And before the district court could hold a competency-restoration hearing, the 2  Appellate Case: 25-1034 Document: 55-1 Date Filed: 05/11/2026 Page: 3 parties once again advised the court that Coad was incompetent. Facing a repeating loop with Coad’s competency depending on his taking the needed drugs, the court again ruled Coad incompetent and further r