Anissa E. Weier is led into a Waukesha County courtroom Thursday for a hearing on whether she is competent to stand trial on accusations she tried to stab a classmate to death. A judge earlier ordered that her face not be photographed. Co-defendant Morgan Geyser was also found competent for trial on Thursday. Credit: Michael Sears 
 
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 Waukesha — Two middle school girls charged with trying to kill a classmate to gain favor with Slender Man, a fictional Internet character, were ruled competent Thursday to face their prosecution. 
 
 The rulings came amid the revelation that one of the defendants suffers from schizophrenia. 
 
 Waukesha County Circuit Judge Michael Bohren found Anissa Weier, 13, competent after a three-hour hearing Thursday morning at which mental health experts offered differing conclusions on that issue. 
 
 Morgan Geyser, 12, had been set for a similar hearing in the afternoon to challenge a state psychiatrist's finding that, through treatment, she had regained competency after being ruled in August to be unable to fully understand the charges or aid in her own defense. 
 
 But at the start of the hearing, attorney Anthony Cotton announced that her defense team was dropping its objection to the finding by state psychiatrist Kenneth Casimir, and would agree that she is now competent to proceed. 
 
 Cotton revealed in court that Casimir has diagnosed Geyser with schizophrenia, a mental illness. Cotton then asked if Bohren would order that Geyser continue to be held at the Winnebago Mental Health Institute, where she has been for months and where she can continue to be monitored by doctors while attending school and seeing a social worker. 
 
 Cotton said there would be a good chance Geyser might regress to incompetency if returned to the juvenile detention facility in West Bend where she had been kept until August, and where Weier remains. 
 
 Bohren granted the request, for now. 
 
 The long awaited preliminary hearings in the case, which was charged in June, are now set for February, likely the week of the 16th. 
 
 At those hearings prosecutors must show simple probable cause that the girls committed the specific offense of attempted first degree intentional homicide. 
 
 Then the case can move to what the defense attorneys have said will be critical — their attempts to have the case "reverse waived" to juvenile court. That would be considered at a future hearing. 
 
 As adults, they could face up to 60 years in prison. As juveniles, they could be held in a secure facility until they're 25. 
 
 Conflicting findings 
 
 Bohren made his ruling on Weier after hearing from three mental health professionals who have examined Weier. Two psychologists retained by the defense believed she is not competent, based on an emotional immaturity and the lack of strategic decision making ability. One was a psychiatrist appointed by the court who said he believed Weier, whom he found extremely intelligent, was competent. 
 
 All three said they found Weier to be bright, articulate and cooperative. They agreed she seemed to understand the serious charges she faces, at least at the very broadest level. 
 
 But the psychologists felt that in terms of applying her knowledge to decisions about things like whether to plea bargain, she lacked competence,based on her age and immaturity, not any mental illness. 
 
 While she could be tutored on better understanding of legal procedure, only time will allow the brain development that would increase her rational decision making capacity, they said. 
 
 Robert Rawski, the forensic psychiatrist, thought Weier showed she could rationally participate in court proceedings and adequately aid in her defense. 
 
 Weier's attorneys argued that the psychologists had more experience working with juveniles, and spent more time with Weier before reaching their conclusions, which came down to nuanced understandings of adolescent brain development. 
 
 One of the psychologists, Michael Caldwell, was concerned that Weier didn't have a meaningful understanding of time frames, including the fact she could go to prison far longer than she has been alive. 
 
 Caldwell also said Weier had a tendency, despite high intelligence, to ignore things most people would agree are important to consider in a decision and instead base choices on irrelevant factors. . 
 
 The Slender Man stabbing 
 
 Geyser and Weier are charged as adults in the May stabbing of Payton Leutner in a Waukesha park after a sleepover to celebrate Geyer's birthday. 
 
 The pair told investigators they were trying to gain the favor of Slender Man, a fictional online character. Leutner survived her wounds and has since returned to school. 
 
 Attorneys for each girl have said they will try to have their cases moved to juvenile court. 
 
 Geyser already has been found incompetent once, meaning the judge was not convinced she fully understood the charges or was able to aid in her defense. But after weeks of mental treatment, a doctor last month said Geyser had been restored to competency. 
 
 At Geyser's first competency hearing in August, mental health experts testified that during their interviews she exhibited disturbing behavior and beliefs: squatting on her chair, laughing hysterically for no reason, constantly looking in corners. 
 
 She said she had conversations with the fictional Lord Voldemort character from the Harry Potter stories and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. She repeated her belief in Slender Man, unicorns and her own power of "Vulcan mind control." 
 
 The experts said Geyser, in addition to being immature, may suffer from an undiagnosed psychiatric illness. ||||| Waukesha County Circuit Judge Michael Bohren speaks as he rules Monday that two 13-year-old Waukesha girls will be prosecuted as adults rather than juveniles in the attempted killing of the classmate after a sleepover last year. Credit: Mike De Sisti 
 
 SHARE Morgan Geyser, 13, leaves a Waukesha County courtroom Monday after Judge Michael Bohren ruled she and 13-year-old Anissa Weier will stand trial as adults in the attempted killing of a classmate after a sleepover last year. Mike De Sisti Anissa Weier, 13, is readied to leave a Waukesha County courtroom Monday after Judge Michael Bohren ruled she and 13-year-old Morgan Geyser will stand trial as adults in the attempted killing of a classmate after a sleepover last year. Mike De Sisti Matt Geyser, father of Morgan Geyser, reacts after Waukesha County Circuit Judge Michael Bohren ruled Monday that Geyser and 13-year-old Anissa Weier will be tried as adults in the attempted killing of a classmate after a sleepover last year. Mike De Sisti Waukesha Stabbing 
 
 Two 12-year-old girls are charged with attempted first-degree intentional homicide for what police say was a plot, planned over months, to kill their classmate. Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier reportedly stabbed their victim 19 times with a five-inch blade. Go to section 
 
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 Waukesha — A pair of 13-year-old girls will be prosecuted as adults in the attempted killing of a classmate after a sleepover last year, a judge ruled Monday after finding that moving their case to juvenile court would "unduly depreciate the seriousness of the offense." 
 
 Waukesha County Circuit Judge Michael Bohren announced Monday that defense lawyers had failed to convince him that the cases should be moved to juvenile court, where the girls would face only three years of incarceration and extensive supervision until age 18. 
 
 "This court continues to be concerned with what happens after age 18," Bohren said. 
 
 "There has to be assurance to the public — and to these defendants as well — that a serious offense has to be dealt with on a serious basis that offers protection to everyone," he said. 
 
 State law required the girls — who were 12 at the time — to be charged and prosecuted as adults, which could expose them to 45-year prison sentences. The law allows children in adult court to ask that their cases be transferred to the juvenile process. 
 
 Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier are charged as adults with attempted first-degree intentional homicide in the May 31, 2014, attack on Payton Leutner after a sleepover at Geyser's house to mark her 12th birthday. 
 
 A passing bicyclist found Leutner bleeding from 19 stab wounds in a park. Though she suffered serious internal injuries, Leutner recovered in time to start seventh grade last fall. 
 
 Geyser and Weier were arrested the day of the attack as they tried to walk to northern Wisconsin. They told police they were trying to impress or appease Slender Man, a fictional Internet character they believed could kill them or their families if they didn't kill their friend. They said they hoped to join Slender Man in his mansion in the Nicolet National Forest. 
 
 3-point legal threshold 
 
 During separate hearings in May and June, lawyers for Weier and Geyser tried to convince Bohren of three points: 
 
 ■That the girls could not get needed treatment in the adult system. 
 
 ■That prosecuting them as adults is not the only way to deter others from similar crimes. 
 
 ■That the transfer would "not depreciate the seriousness of the offense." 
 
 They presented experts on adolescent brain development, psychiatrists and psychologists who examined the girls, their jailers and former teachers. They described good students with no history of violence or criminal activity. 
 
 Weier suffered from a delusional disorder that allowed her to believe in Slender Man, and that he would harm her or her family if she and Geyser didn't kill for him, the doctors and psychologists who examined her for competency said. But after her arrest, she understood she had been wrong and then suffered depression over her prior choices, beliefs and actions. Doctors said she is willing and able to get better and scores virtually no risk to repeat such an offense. 
 
 Slender Man is an online boogeyman character that started with a photo-shopped image and grew into a kind digital urban legend through reader-generated stories on websites. 
 
 Geyser, who Weier and Leutner say actually did the stabbing when Weier refused at the last minute, was diagnosed during competency evaluations as suffering from early onset schizophrenia. Experts said she continues to converse with fictional characters, concedes that Slender Man might order her to kill again and believes she can suppress negative emotions through Vulcan mind control. 
 
 During his oral ruling, Bohren acknowledged all that, but kept coming back to the disturbing, premeditated nature of the crime, an offense he described as, "frankly, vicious." 
 
 He stressed how the girls began plotting the homicide months earlier, and how, after Leutner had been stabbed, they told her to lie still so as not to lose blood, while they went for help, while in fact they just didn't want her to be discovered. 
 
 Nationally watched case 
 
 National advocates for juvenile justice reform had been watching the Slender Man case. Even though they agreed the offense was horrible and extreme, and that Leutner was lucky to survive, they say Geyser and Weier do not need, and will not benefit from, adult prosecution. 
 
 They cite the same arguments the girls' lawyers made: that children prosecuted as adults have a much higher recidivism rate than children handled in juvenile or family courts, and that deterrence — a concept perhaps tied to the great public exposure of an adult prosecution — means little to other 12-year-olds. The part of the brain that could process deterrence is the last to develop, science has shown, often not until early adulthood. 
 
 Marsha Levick, of the Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia, also notes that even a three-year term of incarceration is a very long sentence to a 13-year-old. "It's the critical years of adolescence," she said, and the juvenile system provides "an environment that helps them manage it." 
 
 Kim Dvorchak, director of the National Juvenile Defender Center in Washington, D.C., notes if the girls remain in custody from age 12 to 18, "it's actually half their life span. We can't look at the sentence though the perspective of an adult offender." 
 
 The girls have been held in a juvenile detention center in West Bend since May 2014. 
 
 But prosecutors have noted that even if Geyser and Weier are convicted as adults, they would serve the first years of any sentences at the same facility where girls found delinquent go — Copper Lake School in Lincoln County. 
 
 They've also stressed that Bohren could put the girls on probation after they age out of Copper Lake at age 18, with more input about conditions and consequences of breaking those rules than if they were in the juvenile system. 
 
 Insanity plea likely 
 
 Weier and Geyser appeared jointly at Monday's hearing. Weier seemed upbeat and animated during conversations with her attorney, Maura McMahon, who explained the function of the larger, ceremonial courtroom where proceedings were held for the first time, because of Bohren's judicial rotation since the last hearings. 
 
 While Weier wore a bright blue patterned shirt, Geyser appeared in a black hoodie. She bounced in her chair before an attorney arrived. Her lead attorney, Anthony Cotton, listened in to the hearing by telephone while driving to a hearing in another county. 
 
 "I don't think this changes the big picture," Cotton said in an interview afterward, referring to the likelihood that Geyser will plead not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect. At least one mental health expert testified at her reverse waiver hearing that he thinks Geyser's illness would qualify her to raise such a defense, which results in commitment to a state mental hospital. 
 
 While the defense might consider appealing Bohren's decision on the reverse waiver, Cotton said it's hard to win a reversal on matters that are so plainly within a judge's discretion. Cotton also noted that appeals would only delay a disposition that might get Geyser treatment. 
 
 Arraignment for Geyser and Weier was set for Aug. 21.
– Two Wisconsin girls who allegedly stabbed a classmate 19 times to please the "Slender Man" fictional online character are competent to stand trial, a judge has decided. Both girls, who were 12 when they allegedly tried to kill another 12-year-old girl after a sleepover, have been charged as adults. Morgan Geyser, who is still 12, was ruled incompetent in August after a psychologist testified that she was delusional, but at a hearing yesterday, her lawyer decided not to dispute a state psychiatrist's finding that she is now fit for trial, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports. The attorney told the judge that Geyser is being treated for schizophrenia. In a separate hearing, Anissa Weier, now 13, was also deemed competent after the judge decided that "issues of age and maturity do not override her competency," the AP reports. Psychologists who testified for the defense argued that although she is intelligent and articulate, she has trouble making decisions and understanding issues like the risk of turning down a plea bargain. Lawyers for both girls are trying to have the case moved to juvenile court. The judge decided to allow Geyser to remain at the mental health institute where she has been for months after her lawyer argued that returning her to the juvenile detention facility where Weier is still being held could lead to her becoming unfit for trial again. (The sinister Slender Man character was created by an online forum user in 2009.)