A man accused of murdering a New Orleans police officer stopped jury selection for his trial on Wednesday by rubbing human feces on himself.
Travis Boys, 35, has pleaded not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity to murdering Officer Daryle Holloway while escaping from custody in June 2015.
Jury selection was occurring at around 4pm when Boys removed a napkin from his suit pocket and opened it to reveal feces that he began to rub on his face, head and mouth, NOLA.com reported.
Travis Boys, 35, stopped his jury selection on Wednesday when he pulled out feces in a napkin and rubbed it into his head and face. The jury was dismissed and a competency hearing called
Boys said nothing while covering himself in the excrement; it’s unclear exactly where the feces came from, but it was likely saved by Boys during a bathroom break.
When she saw what was happening, Criminal District Judge Karen Herman stopped proceedings and dismissed the jury that had seen the incident.
Herman has now ordered another competency evaluation for Boys, whose capacity to stand trial has previously been questioned by his defense team.
It will take place today. If it’s decided that the trial should go ahead,
Boys is accused of fatally shooting New Orleans cop Daryle Holloway (pictured) in June 2015. He has pleaded not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity
At an earlier competency hearing on September 21, Boys’ defense team introduced Dr James Brad McConville a psychiatrist and professor at Tulane University.
‘He doesn’t understand his legal rights,’ McConville testified. ‘He would have significant difficulty testifying without incriminating himself.
‘My recommendation is that he be found incompetent to stand trial and undergo further testing and legal rights education.’
But court-appointed experts Dr Rafael Salcedo, a forensic psychologist, and Dr Richard Richoux, forensic psychiatrist, said Boys was capable of standing trial.
All three are expected to speak in court today, where it will be questioned whether Boys was simply engaging in a stunt.
Boys was arrested on June 20, 2015, for allegedly firing a gunshot near his wife.
He was placed in the back of a police cruiser driven by Officer Holloway, but had somehow smuggled a gun in with him, prosecutors allege.
They say that Holloway’s bodycam footage shows ‘beyond any doubt’ that Boys shot the cop in the chest before attempting to exit the car by crawling through the access window between the front and rear of the vehicle.
At that point, Holloway, wounded but still alive, attempted to wrestle the gun out of Boys’ hands, police said at the time.
Boys’ lawyers say that he isn’t competent to stand trial, but court-appointed psychiatrists disagreed in an earlier competency hearing
‘While Officer Holloway struggled with Boys over control of the weapon, Boys yelled three times, “Let me go before you kill yourself!”‘, detective Sgt. Kevin Burns Jr said in the warrant application, according to a 2015 Nola.com report.
But Holloway, weakened by his wound, was unable to keep up the fight and Boys slipped out of his grasp, exited through the passenger door and closed it behind him, cops said.
At that point, Burns wrote, ‘Officer Holloway accelerated, likely after losing control of motor skills, and violently crashed into a utility pole near the intersection of Claiborne and Elysian Field Avenue.’
It remains unclear how Boys might have smuggled a gun into the car or got his hands from behind his back to his front.
Boys was arrested the following day when he was spotted getting onto a bus.
Holloway was at the wheel of his cruiser when Boys apparently shot him with a smuggled gun and crawled out of the rear. Holloway lost control of the car (pictured), crashing it