According to Western Journal, the latest development in the case of 35-year-old Decarlos Brown Jr. threatens to delay justice yet again for the family of 23-year-old victim Iryna Zarutska, a war refugee who came to the United States seeking safety and opportunity. Brown’s murder trial in state court had already been postponed after a North Carolina judge ruled him incompetent to proceed, and his defense team is now pressing for a similar outcome in federal court on a charge of committing an act causing death on a mass transportation system.
According to The Carolina Journal, Brown’s attorneys say federal mental health evaluators with the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Prisons have determined that their client “is not competent to proceed” and is unable to assist in his own defense. The defense filed a motion on Thursday asking a federal judge to convene a competency hearing in light of those findings.
“DeCarlos Brown suffers from serious mental illness and impairments,” the motion stated, laying the groundwork for another lengthy pause in the prosecution. “Our Constitution requires that, before he can be tried, or possibly sentenced to death, he must first be capable of proceeding in his criminal case. Now, federal examiners with the Department of Justice-Bureau of Prisons have determined that Mr. Brown’s mental illness and impairments make him currently incapable of proceeding in his federal criminal case.”
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The defense urged the court to take Brown out of the normal criminal process and place him under federal control for treatment. “This Court should now set a hearing, find Mr. Brown incompetent, and remand him into the custody of the Attorney General for secure hospitalization and treatment,” the motion continued.
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Federal evaluators concluded that Brown “has a mental illness … and a mental defect” and “does not have a factual understanding of the legal system or his legal situation because of his mental illness.” On that basis, they found that Brown “cannot make rational case-related decisions because of his mental illness,” and “cannot work with his defense attorneys because of his mental illness.”
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“For years, Mr. Brown has suffered from debilitating mental illness and impairment,” his lawyers wrote, portraying a long-running pattern of psychological disturbance. “He experiences delusions that center around his belief that he was exposed to a Material and it ‘control[s] his every movement.’ He refers to it as his Body Emergency. The delusions are constant and persistent.”
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Those delusions, the motion suggested, were already driving Brown’s behavior in the months before Zarutska’s killing, when he appeared in court on a charge of misusing the 911 system. In that earlier case, he claimed a “man-made” substance had been implanted in his body, yet despite that bizarre allegation and what has been described as a lengthy criminal record, Magistrate Judge Teresa Stokes released him in January 2025 on nothing more than a “written promise to appear.”
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That decision, emblematic of a lenient and risk-blind approach to repeat offenders, preceded the horrific events of August 2025 on Charlotte’s light rail system. Surveillance footage from the train allegedly shows Brown sitting and shuffling in his seat before suddenly rising and stabbing Zarutska in the neck from behind as she looked down at her phone.
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Witnesses reported that Brown then chillingly declared, “I got that white girl.” The shocking remark, coupled with the random nature of the attack, has fueled public outrage over why a man with such a record and such obvious instability was free to roam public transit in the first place.
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A state judge has already granted Brown’s lawyers a 180-day delay in the murder trial after an evaluation at Central Regional Hospital in Butner, North Carolina, found him incompetent to stand trial. Now, depending on how the federal judge rules on the new motion, the federal case could be placed on a similar track of indefinite delay and treatment rather than swift adjudication.
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U.S. Attorney Russ Ferguson, who is prosecuting the federal case, supports holding a competency hearing but has emphasized that a finding of incompetence does not automatically terminate the prosecution. His office noted in Thursday’s filing that a determination of incompetence “does not end the case; a finding of incompetence to proceed is simply a snapshot, meaning at this time the defendant cannot understand the nature and consequences of the proceedings against him or assist properly in his defense.”
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“If the Court were to find Brown incompetent to proceed at this moment, Brown would be moved to a specialized BOP facility that provides medical treatment to restore his competency,” prosecutors wrote, outlining a process that could eventually return Brown to court. “Once availability at the specialized BOP facility is confirmed and Brown is securely transported to the facility, he would undergo medical treatment for a period of time not to exceed four months.”
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“While receiving treatment at the BOP facility, Brown may be provided medication to restore his competency, including forced medication if necessary, consistent with constitutional safeguards,” the filing added, underscoring that the government still intends to pursue the case once he is deemed fit. Brown’s next competency hearing on the state charge is scheduled for Oct. 27, and the federal court’s handling of the new motion will likely determine whether the federal proceedings follow the same path.
For many Americans watching this case, the legal wrangling over Brown’s mental state raises broader questions about a justice system that repeatedly releases dangerous, mentally unstable offenders back into communities and onto public transportation. While constitutional protections for the mentally ill are vital, the facts surrounding Zarutska’s death — a vulnerable refugee murdered on a city train by a man with a “debilitating” history of delusions and a “rather lengthy rap sheet” who was freed on a mere promise to appear — highlight the high cost of policies that prioritize leniency and process over public safety and accountability.
