MOSCOW, April 14. /TASS/. After hearing arguments in the closed session case of Joseph Tater, a US citizen accused of assaulting a police officer, the Moscow Meshchansky Court ruled in favor of the prosecution, and ordered that he be committed to an inpatient psychiatric hospital, his lawyer Polina Vlasyuk told TASS.
"The court has just decided to release our client, Joseph Tater, from further punishment and has chosen compulsory medical measures for him in a specialized hospital with intensive supervision," she said referring to judge Oksana Goryunova's ruling.
The hearing was held behind closed dcors at the request of the state prosecution, citing the defendant's right to keep his medical records private. The court found Tater to be insane at the time of committing the crime he is accused of. The 46-year-old American's defense insisted that he was sane, that the charges against him should be dropped, and there were no grounds to force him into a psychiatric hospital.
Vlasyuk told TASS she would appeal the court ruling.
Tater will soon be escorted by medical staff and police to the psychiatric facility he was being held at prior to being tried for assaulting a police officer.
Tater has two dependents in the United States, children born in 2009 and 2013. The case file says that Moscow doctors diagnosed him with a mental disorder. The American also underwent an inpatient forensic psychiatric examination at the V. P. Serbsky National Medical Research Center, where doctors confirmed the diagnosis.
On August 12, 2024, Tater arrived at the Radisson Hotel in Moscow, where he began to behave aggressively, causing a fracas with the staff, who refused to check him in without information about his previous place of residence in Moscow. According to the investigation, Tater provided this information, but it didn’t check out, so he wasn’t checked in.
Police were called and he was taken into custody. At the police station, he refused to provide documents proving his identity, and forcefully grabbed a female police officer’s arm. On August 14, the Moscow Meshchansky Court found him guilty of committing an administrative offense under Part 1 of Article 20.1 of the Administrative Code (petty hooliganism), sentencing him to 15 days in jail. The next day, the Investigative Committee in Moscow opened a criminal case on the fact of his attack (Article 318 of the Criminal Code) on a police officer. The court sent Tater to a pre-trial detention facility. He pleaded not guilty.