WASHINGTON — A federal magistrate judge ordered the man accused of threatening to blow up the Library of Congress last week to undergo further mental competency screening Wednesday after a psychologist said he'd been prescribed the wrong medications for his bipolar disorder.
Dr. Teresa Grant, a psychologist for the D.C. Department of Behavioral Health, told Magistrate Judge Zia M. Faruqui that she believed a psychiatrist in North Carolina had prescribed the wrong medication for Floyd Ray Roseberry.
Roseberry is accused of threatening to use a weapon of mass destruction when he claimed the truck he had parked on the sidewalk outside of the Library of Congress was rigged to explode if the windows were shot out. If deemed competent to stand trial and subsequently found guilty, Roseberry could potentially face a sentence of up to life in prison.
However, Roseberry appeared confused at his initial appearance before Faruqui last week – saying he'd been in jail without his medication for "the last week," despite being in custody at that point for less than 24 hours.
Grant said Roseberry's psychiatrist in North Carolina had agreed to modify his medication regimen. She recommended Roseberry undergo further mental competency screening, and offered to handle that herself so that he would not have to be transferred out of the District to a federal facility. No federal facilities in D.C. have the capacity to perform full mental competency evaluations, and, unlike D.C. Superior Court cases, federal inmates are not able to go to St. Elizabeth's Hospital for evaluation.
Both Faruqui and David Bos, the federal public defender appointed to represent Roseberry in the case, agreed with that course of action.
"If it takes months for him to get that evaluation it could severely exacerbate that situation," Faruqui said. "We want him to be healthy and well so that we can go forward."
Roseberry is scheduled to be back in court on September 22 at 10 a.m.