(JTA) — The man accused of stabbing five people and killing one at a 2019 Hanukkah party at a rabbi’s house in Monsey, New York, has again been deemed unfit to stand trial.
Grafton Thomas, now 38, has already been declared unfit to stand trial multiple times.
In January 2020, about a month after the stabbing at the home, a psychiatrist determined that Thomas was incompetent to stand trial. That April, as U.S. District Court Judge Cathy Siebel ruled similarly and ordered that Thomas undergo mental health treatment. In December, prosecutors said he was still not fit to stand trial, according to the New York Daily News.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Lindsey Keenan came to the same determination this week, according to the Daily News.
“There currently is not a substantial probability that in the foreseeable future the defendant will attain the capacity to permit the proceedings to go forward,” she wrote in a court filing.
If Siebel accepts that determination, Thomas will be confined to a state-run institution.
The stabbing, on Dec. 28, 2019, came near the end of Hanukkah and amid a wave of anti-Semitic attacks in the New York City area. The attacker stabbed five people with a machete, including Josef Neumann, who died from his wounds following months in a coma.
