NASSAU COUNTY, Fla. — During a hearing to evaluate her mental competency to stand trial, accused killer Kimberly Kessler made a short, but memorable appearance.
Strapped down to a chair and shouting, Kessler was wheeled into the Nassau County courtroom after initially refusing to appear.
"Jordan Beard is Joleen Cummings' cousin!" she shouted over and over again as deputies pushed her chair into the room 45 minutes after the hearing was scheduled to begin.
Beard is one of Cummings' public defenders and no relation to Cummings' family, according to attorney Teri Sopp, who told Circuit Judge James Daniel last year that the assertion "is factually inaccurate" after Kessler made the claim in an October 2020 court appearance.
Kessler is charged with first-degree murder in the death of Cummings, a Yulee mother and hairstylist who disappeared in May 2018 and whose body has never been found.
Kessler has pleaded not guilty. Her mental competency has been the subject of ongoing delays in the court proceedings, along with delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
She has been sent to the hospital several times due to her dangerously low weight amid a hunger strike. Corrections officers have also noted several occasions in which Kessler has smeared feces on the walls and window of her cell.
In May, a doctor found Kessler mentally incompetent to stand trial, according to court records. That determination came a few weeks after Kessler refused to leave her cell for a mental evaluation hearing, threatening to remove her clothing if she was forced to appear.
The doctor's ruling was based on Kessler's jail records, her public defender said, after she twice refused to see the doctor for an evaluation.
Kessler was deemed incompetent to stand trial in 2020, but the judge overruled that determination, saying she "may be a psychopath," but that she did not have a diagnosed mental illness.