First week of Dominguez competency trial: Experts lay out Davis stabbings suspect’s mental spiral

A forensic neuropsychologist testified on Friday that he found a frail young man most likely suffering from his first break of schizophrenia when he first met Carlos Reales Dominguez, who is accused of a brutal stabbing spree in Davis that ended with his arrest three months ago.

Dale Watson, the forensic neuropsychologist, was in Yolo Superior Court in Woodland for the fifth day of Reales Dominguez’s mental competency trial. His testimony wrapped up the first week of the trial, which will reconvene Aug. 7.

Guilt or innocence in the stabbings is not in question — the jury in the trial will decide whether the 21-year-old former UC Davis student is mentally fit to face charges of murder and attempted murder in three stabbings.

The brutal and seemingly random attacks shocked and frightened residents for a week as authorities in the college town of Davis searched for the suspect. The Davis Police Department on May 4 announced Dominguez’s Reales’ arrest as the sole suspect in the stabbings.

The knife attacks killed 50-year-old David Breaux and 20-year-old graduating UC Davis student Karim Abou Najm at separate Davis city parks. A third attack seriously wounded Kimberlee Guillory, 64, as she slept in her Davis homeless encampment.

In his opening statement to the jury Tuesday, Yolo County Deputy Public Defender Daniel Hutchinson said Reales Dominguez is severely mentally ill. The defense attorney told the jurors that his client suffers from schizophrenia, depicting Reales Dominguez as a man plunging ever deeper into mental crisis.

First meeting with Reales Dominguez

Watson was hired by the defense to evaluate the defendant’s mental health. He first met Reales Dominguez on May 31 during the first of three interviews at the Yolo County Jail. At the time, the defendant had been in custody at the jail for about a month since his arrest.

“His hair was stringy down his face; he smelled badly,” Watson said on the witness stand.

He remembered Reales Dominguez appearing “very thin,” not much different from the way he looked in the courtroom Friday seated next to his attorney. The forensic neuropsychologist for 33 years remembered being startled by Reales Dominguez when the defendant reached out to shake his hand with somewhat “robotic” social graces and demeanor.

Watson testified that Reales Dominguez made very little eye contact with him during that first interview, which lasted about five hours. He said the defendant was slow in processing information, had difficulties performing simple clerical tasks, had a rigid posture and hardly moved and said very little; mostly passive responses without offering information on his own.

After two other jail visits in June, Watson concluded that Reales Dominguez is mostly likely suffering from schizophrenia.

Watson said Reales Dominguez’s records at Castlemonth High School in Oakland showed he was a good student with a 3.8 GPA and with average SAT scores. He said the defendant took the SAT test again and got a better score the second time, showing his ability to excel academically with hard work.

His grades at UC Davis also showed he could do well in college. But Watson said that changed dramatically as he started to fail courses in the fall of 2022. In the winter quarter of that year, his last as an enrolled student, he was failing all of his classes at UC Davis.

Watson said that’s when the suspect was experiencing the most obvious symptoms of schizophrenia.

Reales Dominguez was known to have “pristine grooming,” Watson said of the statements from those close to him. Watson said the defendant was now a man who couldn’t even clean himself. He gave Reales Dominguez an IQ test, which showed the defendant now had the equivalent IQ of a 10-year-old child.

Deteriorating mental health

Along with the jail evaluations, Watson reviewed statements from Reales Dominguez’s former girlfriend and roommates. He said the statements, the defendant’s appearance and behaviors and declining school performance showed him signs of a young man’s deteriorating mental health.

A Yolo County mental health professional, former roommates, a co-worker and an ex-girlfriend testified earlier to Reales Dominguez’s declining mental state. They said the young man had heard voices, had stopped talking to his roommates months before the late April and early May attacks.

“He was thinking people were saying bad things about him if they pass him by on the street,” Watson said of the defendant.

The neuropsychologist said it’s common for suffering from schizophrenia to have hallucinations or delusions; often a perceived evil force against them that they firmly believe is true. Those symptoms are known as “positive” symptoms, Watson said.

Schizophrenia also can produce “negative” symptoms, such as losing the ability for social functions and the basic drive to do anything. Watson said those symptoms are the “devastating parts” the mental disorder.

“His judgment is impaired. He doesn’t have insight,” Watson said about Dominguez Reales. “He doesn’t appear to have an awareness that he has a mental illness.”

The prosecution insists Reales Dominguez is competent to face criminal charges in the stabbings. Yolo County Deputy District Attorney Matthew De Moura has argued in the trial that the defendant has been “toying with the system,” selectively understanding and answering questions posed to him by investigators, doctors and his defense attorney.

Watson testified that he conducted a series of malingering tests to determine whether Reales Dominguez was faking a mental illness.

“My opinion is that he’s not malingering symptoms of mental illness,” Watson said in court. “In fact, I think he’s trying to deny them (the mental illness symptoms).”

Mental competency evaluation not completed

Watson’s third jail visit was intended to give Reales Dominguez a mental competency evaluation to determine whether he can assist his attorney in his own legal defense. That evaluation never happened, because Watson and jail staff found Reales Dominguez naked in his cell and refusing to cooperate. Watson said he was unable to make his competency evaluation to the court.

The prosecution has challenged a defense expert, Psychologist Juliana Rohrer, who testified that she had found Reales Dominguez was “a textbook example of schizophrenia” after changing her opinion in recent weeks upon reviewing findings from Watson.

The attorneys on both sides only learned of her changed opinion as Rohrer testified Thursday. In a June 12 report to the court, Rohrer had concluded Reales Dominguez had a psychotic disorder stopping short of a full schizophrenia diagnosis.

Rosemary Gladden also testified in the trial on Thursday and Friday. She’s a registered nurse and health services administrator for Wellpath, a company that provides medical treatment for inmates at the Yolo County Jail. She said Reales Dominguez went on “hunger strikes” at the jail, refusing to eat but not putting his own life in danger.

Patricia Tyler, a telehealth psychiatrist who provides mental health care via Zoom call, recommended on June 21 that Reales Dominguez be given emergency antipsychotic medication. Tyler recommended the medication due to his “life-threatening” refusing to eat and drink, according to the psychiatrist’s note read in court. Reales Dominguez’s weight was down to 108 pounds at the time.

Gladden said Tyler made the recommendation improperly without reviewing the defendant’s medical chart or discussing his condition with physicians. She said such actions could harm the patient, so she sought advice from her corporate managers instead of giving Reales Dominguez the medication.

“We don’t give these medications willy-nilly,” Gladden said on the witness stand. “He is very slight of build. He’s not in danger of dying.”

She said it’s her job to protect the patients from medication that could create an allergic reaction or some other kind of harmful outcome. Only after “coaching” Tyler how to properly order the emergency medication was Reales Dominguez given the first does of antipsychotic medication on July 13, Gladden testified. She said she’s unaware if Reales Dominguez had received another dose since then, and that a court order would ensure the defendant get the emergency medication at the jail instead of visits to the local hospital.

Reales Dominguez has stated clear his opposition to taking antipsychotic medication, his attorney told Judge Samuel McAdam outside the jury’s presence on Friday. The judge invited the medical professionals caring for Reales Dominguez to petition the court to order emergency medication at the jail.

“I think he should’ve been medicated weeks ago,” the judge told the attorneys. “We have overwhelming evidence he has a mental health condition.”

When will jury deliberations begin?

On Friday morning, McAdam excused one of the jurors from the trial for a family emergency he had to attend to. He randomly chose one of the four alternates to replace the excused jurors and proceeded with the competency trial.

The judge told the jurors that testimony in the mental competency trial would resume Aug. 7. The court will spend a week with previously scheduled motion hearings in other cases and a trial management hearing Thursday afternoon in Reales Dominguez’s case.

McAdam told the jurors that it’s possible their deliberations could begin as soon as Aug. 9.

“We’re still on target, I wanted to share that with you,” the judge told the jurors. “I’m not worried that we’re going to take the week off.”

The Bee’s Darrell Smith contributed to this story.