Judge Deems Suspect in Oikos University Killings Mentally Incompetent

A judge has decided that a man charged with mass murder is mentally unfit to stand trial for killing seven former classmates at Oikos University in Oakland in 2012.

The Alameda County Superior Court judge ruled Thursday that One Goh, 47, suffers from schizophrenia, severe depression and a delusional disorder.

The hearing was prompted after one psychologist found that Goh is competent. However, several other clinicians, including one of UCSF's top psychiatric law experts, disagreed.

After weeks of testimony, Judge Gloria Rhynes told the courtroom today that Goh remains steeped in the same delusions that led to the killing spree.

Goh was doing well in school when he says he believes faculty started to conspire against him, handing out test answers to other students and laughing at him. He maintains his car was followed through a GPS tracker, that his landlord was spying on him through the keyhole and leaving maggots on his floor. His lawyers say paranoia led him to withdraw from school and become homeless in the months before he returned to Oikos to demand a refund, allegedly leaving friends and faculty dead.

Since the killings, Assistant Public Defender Dave Klaus says Goh asks to spend most of his time locked up in his room at Napa Hospital. Goh insists he wants to plead not guilty and go to trial, so he can outline how the school conspired against him, though he eventually wants the death penalty.

Rhynes says Goh's persistent delusions flow from severe schizophrenia that renders him incapable of helping his lawyers mount a defense. Now Goh will enter into proceedings to determine whether he should be criminally committed.

Klaus says that, trial or no trial, Goh will never be free.

"Mr. Goh will not be released whether [he] is in a locked psychiatric facility or whether [he] is in a state prison," says Klaus.

But Efanye Chibuko, who lost his wife, Doris, during the massacre, says that's no consolation.

"As long as he is out there and this case is not buried, how can the families heal?" asks Chibuko.

Rhynes told families that if Goh were to improve, trial proceedings could resume.