Father’s Competence: Attorney Has Doubts

Criminal proceedings were suspended today for a man accused of killing his baby daughter near Desert Hot Springs and leaving her body in a camper in Arkansas, because his attorney declared a doubt of his client’s competence.

Riverside County Superior Court Judge Thomas Douglass suspended the criminal proceedings against Jason Michael Hann, 35, when defense attorney Gregory M. Johnson asked for a sanity examination.

Douglass appointed psychologist Michael Leitman to examine Hann and submit a report to the court. The judge also ordered Hann to return to court on May 24 for a hearing on the psychologists’ findings.

Hann could face the death penalty if convicted of a murder charge stemming from the February 2001 death of his months-old daughter, Montana.

Hann also faces a special circumstance allegation that could bring the death penalty, because he was convicted in Vermont of murdering another child of his there after Montana’s death. Hann was already serving a prison sentence for that crime when Vermont officials allowed him to be hauled back into California courts, where a death penalty could be imposed.

Montana was born in Arizona in December 2000, and the family moved to a trailer park near Desert Hot Springs about a month later, according to a declaration in support of an arrest warrant prepared by Riverside County sheriff’s Investigator Gary LeClair.

Also charged in Montana’s death is Hann’s then-girlfriend Krissy Lynn Werntz, 30, who faces life in prison if convicted. She told LeClair that on Feb. 10, 2001, she had gone to work and Hann had stayed home in their motor home with Montana.

Werntz said when she returned home, she picked up the infant from a bed in the bathtub, but the baby was dead, according to LeClair.

Hann told a detective in Maine in 2002 that he had lost his temper and hit the baby on the side of the head with his hand, and she died later that day, LeClair wrote.

Hann decided to keep his daughter in a trash bag so they could keep her with them, according to LeClair, adding that the couple left California two months later to travel around the nation.

The couple left their daughter’s body in a trailer at a storage facility in Wynne, Ark., but when they didn’t make the rental payments, property managers seized the unit and put the contents up for sale, according to LeClair.

A man later bought the trailer from the unit and while cleaning it out, found the infant’s decomposed body. The infant’s injuries included skull and leg fractures.

The couple was arrested in April 2002 by Maine authorities at a Motel 6, according to court documents.

They were sent to Arkansas in June 2002 to stand trial for the death of their daughter, but a judge there ordered the case to be turned over to California authorities because the death occurred in Riverside County.

Hann is being held at the Indio Jail without bail. Werntz is free on her own recognizance.