Fugitive mental patient Anthony Garver mum during Spokane court hearing

A shackled Anthony Garver rose from his seat briefly in federal court Monday, shook his head and refused to answer questions three days after a statewide manhunt for the accused killer ended in his arrest.

Garver, who also has gone by Anthony Burke, appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge James P. Hutton because he never completed court-ordered supervision on federal charges, filed in 2006, of possessing illegal ammunition.

Garver, 28, went on the lam in 2009, 2010 and 2013 instead of complying with court orders to seek counseling. He is suspected of fatally stabbing a Snohomish County woman in June 2013, and he was being held in Western State Hospital on six-month rehabilitation stays before fleeing with Mark Alexander Adams last week, authorities say.

Snohomish County Superior Court Judge Joseph P. Wilson last year declared Garver incompetent to stand trial on a first-degree murder charge in the 2013 stabbing. Garver’s refusal to participate in Monday’s proceedings means he will remain in custody of the Spokane County Jail until a judge orders, or his attorney requests, additional competency tests.

“I feel it would be an error to ask my client … to enter any kind of plea today,” Garver’s attorney, Peter Schweda, told Hutton.

Garver’s last competency evaluation occurred in January, Schweda said. That report showed “no progress” had been made in restoring Garver’s competency, Schweda said.

Garver’s escape prompted a multiagency manhunt similar to his 27-day flight in July 2009. Spokane County sheriff’s deputies late Friday found Garver, dehydrated and hiding beneath a pile of debris near his parents’ home north of Spokane Valley, near where he was arrested in 2009.

On Monday, a whiskered Garver kept his eyes, behind prescription glasses, pointed downward at the table in front of him in the courtroom. He said nothing during his brief court appearance.

Garver is scheduled to appear again in court later this month, but attorneys for both sides and Hutton said that was unlikely because of the incompetence finding. Schweda may file for competency testing in U.S. District Court, which would move Garver to a federally secured facility.