Fitness evaluation ordered for 2012 Batavia murder suspect
A fitness evaluation has been ordered for Latoya Baines, a Batavia woman accused of the spring 2012 stabbing death of her boyfriend because she thought he was cheating.
The murder of Gerald J. Jackson was Batavia's first murder since 2004.
Baines, 26, of the 1200 block of East Wilson Street, appeared months ago to be headed toward a trial.
But her defense attorney, Sandra Byrd, this week filed the request for an evaluation by the Kane County Diagnostic Center, according to Kane County court records.
"Defendant's attorney raised a bona fide doubt as to the defendants's fitness to stand trial," according to the court order.
Baines, who faces 20 to 60 years if convicted of murder, is due in court May 30. She has been held on $750,000 bail since her arrest.
Byrd, who declined to comment Thursday, also has filed a motion to suppress statements Baines made to police.
A hearing date on that move has not been set before Judge Susan Clancy Boles.
Byrd wrote in court papers that one affirmative defense Baines plans to use in court is she was acting in self-defense when Jackson, 25, was killed.
Prosecutors say Baines argued with Jackson at an apartment building on the 1100 block of East Wilson Street on April 29, 2012, and returned to her own apartment to get a knife.
When police arrived, they found Jackson in a stairwell bleeding from his chest and Baines and another woman struggling at the base of the stairwell.
Authorities have said Jackson was the father of one of Baines' two children.