More than eight months after being charged in the near fatal stabbing of their former classmate, Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier will soon face preliminary hearings in court.
At the hearing, prosecutors must show probable cause that Geyser, 12, and Weier, 13, committed the offense of attempted first-degree intentional homicide. The judge then must decide if there is enough evidence to send the two young suspects to a trial.
The hearings, scheduled over a two-day period, begin at 8:30 a.m. Monday, Feb. 16, before Waukesha County Circuit Court Judge Michael Bohren.
Following the preliminary hearing, it is expected that both Anthony Cotton, Geyser's attorney, and Joseph Smith Jr., Weier's attorney, will request a reverse waiver hearing where they will attempt to have their cases moved to juvenile court instead of in the adult system.
Geyser and Weier are both charged as adults and face up to 65 years in prison. However, in the juvenile system, they would only be held until they are 25 years old.
Nature of charges
Geyser and Weier are accused of plotting for months to kill their friend and attempted to execute their plan on May 31 in a wooded area in Waukesha, near David's Park.
The co-defendants told police that they looked at stabbing their sixth-grade classmate to death in order to please Slender Man, a fictitious Internet horror character. Payton Leutner suffered 19 stabs, including one within a millimeter of a major artery to her heart, doctors said.
After their arrest, the girls told police that they planned to live with Slender Man, whom they believed lived in a mansion in the Nicolet National Forest in northern Wisconsin.
However, none of the details of the alleged crime have been discussed in a courtroom thus far.
Now competent
That's because up until this point, Geyser's and Weier's competency have been the focal point of the legal proceedings.
But now, both girls have been ruled competent to proceed by Bohren.
Getting to this point, however, has taken time.
Geyser was first ruled incompetent in August after medical experts said they did not feel she could assist her attorney in her own defense. As a result, Geyser's legal proceedings were on hold as she received treatment at the Winnebago Mental Health Institute in Oshkosh. Following three months of treatment, a doctor said Geyser was competent to proceed.
While Cotton was initially going to contest that ruling during a competency hearing in December, he ultimately accepted the determination.
Cotton has said Geyser has been diagnosed with schizophrenia. Although she has been ruled legally competent, Geyser, at the request of Cotton, has been allowed to stay at the Winnebago Mental Health Institute.
Cotton made the request because he was afraid that if Geyser returned to the secure Washington County Juvenile Detention Center in West Bend, her level of competency could regress.
'At Winnebago, it's an environment that is better for a child diagnosed with a mental illness,' Cotton said.
Weier, however, has remained in the secure detention center in West Bend.
After doctors came to differing opinions on Weier's competency last fall, a competency hearing for Weier was held in December. The two doctors hired by the defense team said Weier was not competent to proceed, while the court-ordered doctor said she was capable to assist in her own defense.
Ultimately, after a three-hour hearing, Bohren ruled Weier competent.
'She's competent to make the decisions that have to be made,' he said.