Overview

• Brown is charged with first-degree murder and is being held without bail as the case proceeds.
• Federal prosecutors have added a mass-transit death charge, raising potential penalties to include life imprisonment or a possible death sentence.
• Defense counsel has requested a court-ordered mental-competency evaluation following the release of a jail-call in which Brown spoke of mind-reading and implanted “materials.”
• Relatives say Brown has long-standing paranoid schizophrenia, worsened after a 2022 prison release, and that efforts to obtain long-term psychiatric care failed.
• The FBI is assisting an investigation informed by widely circulated surveillance video, while President Trump denounced the killing and Brown’s family urged against capital punishment.