Federal prosecutors will not pursue the death penalty against admitted Planned Parenthood shooter Robert Lewis Dear Jr., the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced Wednesday.

The decision – relayed without explanation in a one-sentence legal filing – comes days after the five-year anniversary of the Nov. 27, 2015, rampage at Colorado Springs’ lone Planned Parenthood clinic, which killed three people, including a police officer, and wounded nine others. Dear, 62, was arrested at the end of a five-hour standoff, and confined for psychiatric treatment several months later after a judge deemed him too delusional to be prosecuted in the state courts. 

The U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to comment on its decision not to pursue a capital case. Attorneys for Dear and representatives of Planned Parenthood were not immediately available for comment, nor were relatives of the victims.

Federal prosecutors launched their case against him in December 2019, an apparent effort to bypass his legal limbo and bring him to trial in the federal courts.

His indictment on 65 counts of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act and three counts alleging murder with the use of a firearm made him eligible for the death penalty, but until now it was unclear whether authorities intended to seek it. 

Judge orders another psychological exam for admitted Planned Parenthood shooter

Under the federal death penalty review process, Attorney General Bill Barr would be required to sign off on the decision not to seek death, after receiving a recommendation from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Denver, according to a source familiar with the general process. Disagreements between the local federal prosecutors and the Justice Department chief are rare, the source said.

The decision will sidestep death-penalty related litigation that would have further delayed the case – assuming Dear is ultimately judged to be mentally fit for prosecution in the federal courts.

The announcement comes amid signs that federal prosecutors could move beyond an 11-month standstill that has likewise sidelined Dear’s federal case amid questions over his mental health.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Kristen L. Mix ruled Nov. 20 that Dear undergo a fresh psychological exam to help determine if he is competent to stand trial, resolving a long-running legal dispute over how his competency should be assessed, and pushing past repeated delays related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mental fitness takes focus at hearing for Planned Parenthood shooter Robert Dear

It remains to be seen when Dear will be evaluated, or by whom. The U.S. Bureau of Prisons will select the expert, but the agency has reported a monthslong backlog in such examinations, federal prosecutors have said in court filings.

Federal prosecutors been critical of Dear’s prior mental health evaluations by state mental health providers, calling them “problematic” and “flawed” because of Dear’s continuing lack of cooperation with his evaluators. Dear has objected to the state evaluations because they aren’t videotaped, leading to him to claim that state mental health experts can invent their findings. Prosecutors say that the Bureau of Prisons evaluations can be taped, suggesting Dear might cooperate. 

Admitted Planned Parenthood shooter Robert Dear indicted by federal grand jury

Dear’s attorneys unsuccessfully argued that previous assessments have been “unanimous” and that further evaluations are unnecessary.

“The five evaluators all say the same thing: the odds that Mr. Dear spontaneously remitting to some form of competency is vanishingly small,” attorney Mark Fleming said at Dear’s virtual appearance last month before the magistrate judge. 

Details of where and when Dear will be examined haven’t been decided. In a filing Monday, Dear’s attorneys asked Mix to continue a 10-day stay on her Nov. 20 order for a fresh psychological exam until the judge decides where it will be conducted. Mix already shot down a request by the U.S. Attorney’s Office that Dear be assessed by the prosecution’s chosen expert, Dr. Park Dietz, who has testified or consulted on cases involving serial killers Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber. 

Instead, the judge ruled that Dear be assessed by a “neutral and qualified BOP examiner,” the defense said in the filing.

The defense has asked that the evaluation be conducted at Englewood Federal Correctional Institution.

Federal prosecutors, not Dear’s attorneys, requested the competency evaluation early in the case against him, after Dear sought to fire his defense team at a court hearing and represent himself. He has repeatedly taken responsibility for the shootings during outbursts in court, including during last month’s hearing before Mix, when he said he had “saved babies’ lives.”

Dear remains in the custody of the U.S. Marshal’s Office, which does not disclose where criminal defendants are held.