A judge denied a Highland woman’s nearly year-long bid Friday to be ruled mentally incompetent.
What that means for Raquel McCormick’s case depends on her next court hearing.
McCormick, now 51, admitted to voluntary manslaughter in the Sept. 1, 2020, death of her boyfriend Thomas Brankin, 53. She appeared in court Friday in a green jail jumpsuit.
She allegedly hit him with an SUV on Aug. 11, 2020 after an argument in a parking lot behind Wine House, her business in downtown Highland, according to an affidavit. Brankin was Valparaiso University’s assistant golf coach and a Schererville accountant.
Two months after she signed her plea in July 2022, her lawyers filed to get her mental competency evaluated, court records show. Three doctors evaluated her. Two said she was competent, while one, erring on the side of caution, said she was not.
Her plea is still on the table. It calls for a 10-30 year sentence. The next court hearing is Aug. 31 where a judge will hear her lawyers’ bid to withdraw from her plea.
Judge Samuel Cappas said Friday he’d seen a “fair amount” of people in a decade on the bench with mental health issues that would get in the way of their understanding of their legal cases.
“They don’t have a clue what’s going on,” he said. With McCormick, “there was nothing that sent up a red flag for me.”
It was likely she was trying to get out of her plea deal — i.e. a “tad bit of buyer’s remorse,” Cappas said.
Immediately after his decision, her lawyer J. Michael Woods asked the judge for permission to withdraw from the plea.
If it’s because her case can go forward now, “that’s not gonna fly,” Cappas told Woods.
No, it’s not, the lawyer said. When McCormick signed the plea, she was hospitalized and dealing with physical and mental health struggles, Woods told him.
If the judge holds up McCormick’s plea, she would get sentenced. If he approves the bid to withdraw it, the case would go to trial.
Deputy Prosecutor Infinity Westberg opposed the bid, saying jailhouse calls showed McCormick had a sharp understanding of her case and plea. Prosecutors had “an interest in getting this case resolved,” Westberg said.
A sentencing hearing was put on the books for Sept. 21 at 11 a.m.
