Duncan returns

BOISE (AP) - A convicted child killer who waived his right to appeal his death sentence is back in Idaho for a competency hearing in federal court to determine if he was mentally competent in 2008 when he waived his rights.

The Idaho Statesman reported that 49-year-old Joseph Edward Duncan III arrived in Boise on Thursday afternoon and is being held in solitary confinement at the Ada County Jail awaiting the hearing set for this week.

Duncan was sentenced to death in 2008 after admitting he kidnapped and tortured two Coeur d'Alene children before killing one of them in western Montana. He gave up his appeals, but his former attorneys fought the sentence on his behalf, and last year the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered U.S. District Judge Edward Lodge to hold a retroactive competency hearing.

Duncan, though convicted of five murders spanning three states in three separate courts, has only been sentenced to death in Idaho's federal case, and that sentence is now in jeopardy.

Duncan's attorneys have argued that Duncan is mentally ill and didn't have the capacity to make a rational decision about whether to waive his appeals. Federal prosecutors have filed documents contending Duncan showed his mental competency throughout his crimes, and has been ruled competent several times by court-appointed experts.

If Lodge finds that Duncan wasn't competent when he gave up his appeals, the judge will have to assess whether Duncan was competent during his sentencing hearing. That could lead to a new sentencing hearing, or a new sentence of life in prison.

If Lodge rules Duncan was competent, Duncan will be returned to death row in Terre Haute, Ind., according to the order of the appeals court.

During his 2008 sentencing hearing, federal prosecutors said Duncan snatched Dylan Groene and his 8-year-old sister from their Wolf Lodge home on a spring day in 2005 after killing their older brother, mother and mother's fiance. Duncan kept the children at a remote Montana campsite for weeks before killing Dylan and returning with Dylan's sister to Coeur d'Alene, where he was arrested.

After Duncan was given three death sentences in Idaho's federal court for Dylan's murder and other federal crimes, prosecutors in Kootenai County opted not to seek the death penalty for the murders of Slade and Brenda Groene and Mark McKenzie, and a state court judge sentenced Duncan to life in prison.

Likewise, in a subsequent trial for the 1997 murder of 11-year-old Anthony Martinez in Riverside County, Calif. - which Duncan confessed after his arrest in Idaho - the local district attorney opted not to seek the death penalty after talking with Martinez' family and noting that Duncan already faced death three times over from Idaho's federal court case.