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The Baltimore man accused of killing a Maine lawyer and philanthropist while he slept at a senior living center in Maryland isn’t competent to stand trial.
That’s the ruling from a Montgomery County Circuit Court judge, who ordered on May 15 that 22-year-old Maurquise James be sent to a state psychiatric hospital, according to NBC affiliate WBAL-TV.
James is scheduled to appear in court in November to see whether he is competent to stand trial for first-degree murder in the death of Robert Fuller Jr., the Baltimore TV station reported.
The competency evaluation was sealed.
Fuller, 87, was found with a gunshot wound to the head about 7:34 a.m. on Feb. 14 in his apartment at Cogir Potomac Senior Living Facility on Potomac Tennis Lane in Gaithersburg, according to the Montgomery County Police Department.
He died at the scene.
His body was taken to the Maryland medical examiner’s office for an autopsy, and Fuller’s death was ruled a homicide.
James, an employee at Cogir, was arrested on Feb. 25 after his vehicle was found in downtown Rockville, Maryland. He also is accused of shooting at a Maryland state trooper in Baltimore during a traffic stop earlier on Feb. 25. He has been charged with attempted murder in that case.
Fuller practiced law in Maine for more than 35 years, was a senior officer in the Naval Reserve, and wrote the novel “Unnatural Deaths,” published in 2009.
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.
BDN writer Ethan Andrews contributed to this report.
