Joseph Randle update: From competent to incompetent

3 November 2023

WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) — A district court judge has ruled that former Dallas Cowboy and Wichita native Joseph Randle is incompetent to stand trial.

Judge Tyler Roush is the same judge who, in April, ruled Randle competent to stand trial for kidnapping and rape charges. Investigators said the charges are from an incident in September 2018 in northeast Wichita.

KSN News reached out to the district attorney’s office to find out what happened between April and now. They provided the following statement:

Mr. Randle was sent to Larned State Hospital (LSH) on Dec 7, 2022.  LSH issued a report March 27, 2023  that found Mr. Randle competent.  After defense counsel disputed Larned’s findings in court on May 11, 2023, the Court ordered Comcare to perform a competency evaluation of Mr. Randle and in a report dated July 4, 2023 they found that Mr. Randle was competent to stand trial.  The defense asked the Court to set an evidentiary hearing regarding the issue of Mr. Randle’s competency and the defense attorney sought an independent evaluation at that time to challenge the LSH and Comcare findings that Mr. Randle was competent.

This morning, defense counsel proffered the results of that independent competency evaluation to the Court.   The Court found Mr. Randle incompetent and ordered him to undergo treatment at Larned State hospital as soon as a bed becomes available at the facility.”

District Attorney Marc Bennet

Roush has ordered Randle, 31, to be sent to an NFL inpatient mental health treatment program in Houston. However, when there is a bed available at Larned State Hospital, Randle will be admitted there for mental health care and treatment.

Randle has been arrested numerous times in the past eight years. In 2020, he was sentenced to more than six years in prison for cases from 2016 and 2017. He was paroled in June 2022, and his sentence expired this past July.

His trial for the 2018 case had been scheduled to start this year.

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