New Options in Capacity to Proceed to Trial Restoration

HYBRID: In person and live webcast event!!

Registration closes on November 16^th at noon.

This CLE has now been approved for 1 general hour.

The Mecklenburg County Public Defender’s Office is offering a free to attend in person or live webcast presentation on New Options in Capacity to Proceed to Trial Restoration. This CLE is for one general hour and the NC State Bar will charge you $3.50/hour. If you need CLE credit, you must fill out the post cle-survey if you are attending online or sign the attendance sheet if you are attending in person. Please register at the link below:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeHeedQlFWJgn_984eKWoWzqKRa-5jH8fY7FR3vlDNYmOjl2w/viewform?usp=sf_link

When: November 17, 2023 from 12-1pm.

Where: Anywhere you have access to internet or a phone or 720 E 4^th St Charlotte 4^th Floor Conference Room of the Mecklenburg County Public Defender’s Office. If attending in person, the conference room will open at 11:45am. Everyone who registers will receive a link to join online.

What:  This one-hour presentation will be divided into four sections:

1. A brief overview of Incapacity to Proceed (ITP) including a review of the Dusky Standard and how it applied and assessed in North Carolina at the local level and at the state hospital.
2. The fundamentals of capacity restoration will be discussed with a focus on the areas of: psychiatric stability, knowledge of legal system and individual circumstance, and development of problem-solving abilities
3. Review of the legal and clinical criteria for the three types of capacity restoration programs currently available for Mecklenburg County defendants: Inpatient at Broughton State Psychiatric Hospital, Detention-based through NC-RISE, and Outpatient at Atrium Health’s CCRP
4. Instruction in court referral process to the various capacity restoration programs with a focus streamlining the assessment/admission process, reducing delays and the scheduling of unnecessary court hearings, and allowing defendants to be served in the most appropriate/least restrictive setting.

Who:

Nathan Andrews, Psy.D., was first licensed as a psychologist in 2010 in the state of Ohio.  He was licensed in New Mexico in 2012 and in 2017 in the state of Washington.  He has been licensed in North Carolina since February 2023.  He has worked in various forensic settings, including outpatient, inpatient, and correctional settings.  He has completed various forensic evaluations including sex offender risk assessments, dangerousness evaluations, mental state evaluations, parenting evaluations, and disability evaluations.  Dr. Andrews has also taught psychopharmacology for a Master’s of Social Work program at New Mexico Highlands University.  He also taught online courses for several years for the Master of Arts Psychology program for Southern New Hampshire University.

Primarily, Dr. Andrews has been involved in evaluating competency to stand trial, or as it is defined in North Carolina, Capacity to Proceed.  For about 11 years, his primary responsibility was evaluating competency to stand trial for defendants in inpatient treatment settings and in-custody.  He has completed over 950 competency or capacity evaluations in his career.  He has testified as an expert witness on these issues in Ohio, New Mexico, and Washington on over 50 different occasions, for both the defense and prosecution.

Dr. Andrews is now the program director of the NC RISE (Restoring Individuals Safely and Effectively) program, operated by Wellpath Recovery Solutions.  The NC RISE program began accepting residents for detention-based capacity restoration on December 7, 2022.  Dr. Andrews also serves as the primary forensic psychologist/evaluator for the program and completes all of the capacity evaluations.

Dr. Sherif Soliman is the medical director for the Atrium Health Community Capacity Restoration Program and the Program Director for the Forensic Psychiatry Fellowship Training Program.  He is Board Certified in General, Forensic, and Geriatric Psychiatry and is a Clinical Associate Professor at the Wake Forest of Medicine and Atrium Health.  In addition, he holds an academic appointment at Case Western Reserve School of Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio.  He completed medical school (2000), psychiatry residency (2004), and geriatric psychiatry fellowship (2005) at Wayne State University in Detroit and has completed Forensic Psychiatry fellowship training at Case Western (2006).

After graduating fellowship in 2006, Dr. Soliman served as an attending psychiatrist at Northcoast Behavioral Healthcare and as the Associate Forensic Director of the former Cleveland Campus of Northcoast.  Dr. Soliman’s duties included treating and evaluating forensic and civil patients, completing forensic reports such as risk assessments and competence to stand trial evaluations, and designing policies for the treatment and assessment of forensic patients.  Dr. Soliman was also forensic psychiatrist at the Cuyahoga County Court Clinic and the City of Cleveland Municipal Court Psychiatric Clinic.  Dr. Soliman’s duties included completing forensic reports such as sanity at the time of the act evaluations, mitigation of penalty evaluations, and competence to stand trial evaluations, among others.  He served as a CIT trainer for the Cleveland Police Department.

Dr. Soliman moved to Charlotte, North Carolina in 2018 to join Atrium Health, where he works as a forensic psychiatrist and an emergency department psychiatrist.  In addition, he does forensic psychiatric evaluations at Broughton Hospital.  Dr. Soliman servs as chair of the Geriatric Psychiatry and the Law Committee at the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, is a past president of the Midwest Chapter of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, and has been awarded the Golden Apple Award by the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law.  This award is awarded for excellence in teaching forensic psychiatry fellows.  Dr. Soliman is active in teaching medical students, residents, and fellows.  In addition to teaching residents at Atrium Health, he teaches forensic psychiatry fellows at Case Western Reserve, residents at Mountain Area Health Education Center (MAHEC), and been an invited speaker at other residency programs throughout the country.  He has also lectured at Continuing Legal Education conferences and to adult protective services workers.

Stephen Strzelecki, Psy.D. is a forensic and clinical neuropsychologist who has been licensed in North Carolina since 1995. He has worked in various settings, including inpatient pediatric rehabilitation, community mental health, and private practice, which also included contractual forensic evaluations through the local mental health Managed Care Organization (MCO) and the NC Department of Juvenile Justice.

Since 2013, Dr. Strzelecki has been part of Mecklenburg County’s Criminal Justice Services (CJS), where he serves as the Clinical Director of the Forensic Evaluations Unit (FEU).  In this role he oversees the completion of Mecklenburg County court-ordered forensic psychological evaluations from all levels of the judiciary, as well as behavioral health diversion programs and grant-based projects designed to address the needs of justice involved individuals with severe mental health disorders, substance use issues, and intellectual-developmental disabilities.

Projects in which Dr. Strzelecki is involved include; Understanding the Frequent Utilizer Population research project with Policy Research Associates, SOAR-Criminal Justice grant project through SAMHSA to expedite access to disability benefits for individuals that are experiencing homelessness and involved with the criminal justice system, and SAMHSA’s GAINS Center-Learning Collaborative: Competence to Stand Trial/Competence Restoration project with the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services.

Within Mecklenburg County, Dr. Strzelecki serves as the chair for the Stepping Up Committee, which is part of a state and national initiative that focuses on reducing the number of individuals with mental illness in jails. He is also a member the Substance Use Disorder Task Force Leadership team, the Involuntary Commitment Committee, Juvenile Model Court Committee, and an instructor with the Mecklenburg County CIT program.

Please contact [email protected] with any questions.