The man accused of fatally shooting a former Maine lawyer and philanthropist at a Maryland assisted living facility is competent to stand trial, a judge ruled on Thursday.
The Montgomery County, Maryland, judge found Maurquise Emillo James fit to stand trial after he underwent a psychiatric evaluation, Fox 45 News in Baltimore reported.
James, 22, of Baltimore, is charged with first-degree murder in the death of 87-year-old Robert Fuller Jr., who was found shot in the head on Feb. 14 in his apartment at Cogir Potomac Senior Living Facility in Gaithersburg, Maryland.
James, who worked at the facility as a med tech, was arrested Feb. 24. He is suspected of shooting at a state trooper during a traffic stop in Baltimore earlier that morning.
Police said James had given Fuller medicine the night before the shooting. James continued to work at the assisted living facility after Fuller’s death and was reportedly seen there outside of his normal work hours, police said.
Additionally, police said they found evidence that the lock on an exterior door through which the suspected killer entered the building had been tampered with and was disabled.
A video released by police during the search for the killer showed a person with long dark hair and a plaid jacket entering walking through a courtyard in the area of the compromised door. Police believed the person was wearing a wig and said they found “numerous wigs” while executing one of several search warrants after James’ arrest.
On Thursday, James’ attorney raised questions about whether the person wearing the wig in the surveillance video could have been James, and said his client plans to plead not guilty, Fox 45 reported.
Fuller practiced law in Maine for more than 35 years and was a senior officer in the Naval Reserve.
His philanthropy included contributions to many institutions in the Augusta area, including a $1.64 million gift in 2021 to modernize Cony High School’s Alumni Field complex.
He was a relative of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Melville Fuller, who served from 1888 to 1910 and notably voted to uphold segregation in the landmark decision Plessy v. Ferguson, which held that “separate but equal” facilities and accommodations for U.S. citizens based on their race didn’t violate the 13th and 14th amendments to the U.S. Constitution. That 1896 ruling stood until 1954 when the high court, under Chief Justice Earl Warren, struck it down in its decision in Brown v. Board of Education.
Robert Fuller Jr. commissioned a statue of the former chief justice in 2013 that was installed in front of the old Kennebec County courthouse in Augusta. The statue, however, became controversial after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020 and the scrutiny that followed of the country’s history of racial injustice. Fuller ultimately agreed to take the statue back and pay for its removal.
Fuller had moved to the Washington, D.C., area to be closer to family.
