Indicted charter founder Dorothy June Brown has dementia, her lawyers say

Lawyers for Dorothy June Brown, a charter school founder scheduled to be retried next month on federal fraud charges, have filed new medical reports that they say bolster their contention that the 77-year-old educator has dementia.

Lawyers said in court documents that they are not seeking to delay Brown's retrial, scheduled to begin July 7 with jury selection on June 29. Instead, they have asked the judge to evaluate Brown's mental competency "at every stage at which it is raised" because physicians at the Cleveland Clinic have concluded that Brown has Alzheimer's-type dementia.

The judge met with defense attorneys and prosecutors Tuesday.

Brown's lawyers did not return calls. Federal prosecutors declined comment.

Gregory P. Miller, Brown's lead attorney, filed the new information with the court Monday, nearly 10 weeks after Judge R. Barclay Surrick ruled that Brown was competent to be retried on charges that she defrauded the charter schools she founded of $6.3 million.

Surrick, who presided over Brown's first trial and a three-day competency hearing, did not agree with defense experts who said that Brown might be exhibiting early stages of dementia that would impair her ability to assist with the defense.

In his April 8 ruling, the judge said that while defense and government experts agreed that Brown had some memory loss, they disagreed on the cause and scope.

According to documents filed with the court this week, Brown's husband took her to the Cleveland Clinic's Louis Ruvo Center for Brain Health Neurological Institute 11 days after the judge's ruling because he was concerned about Brown's "deteriorating mental condition."

Based on tests, an MRI of Brown's brain, and a spinal tap analysis, the Cleveland doctors last month said she had Alzheimer's.

Brown's evaluation in Ohio was the most recent since she spent 29 days at a federal medical center in Fort Worth, Texas, under a court order to assess her competency in November.