R. Allen Stanford’s request for more time to prepare to face charges he led a $7 billion investment fraud scheme has been denied by  U.S. District Judge David Hittner who declared him mentally fit for trial. Jury selection will begin in Houston federal court on Jan. 23. Stanford’s attorneys had asked to delay the trial until late April to give them more time to review millions of pages of company documents with Stanford. They argued they’d had only a few days to review documents with Stanford while he was clear- headed. They said they needed to search beyond the limited set of papers the government has identified as critical to the case. “This case needs to be tried,” U.S. District Judge David Hittner said in an eight-page ruling today. “This trial will decide not just whether Stanford is guilty of the criminal charges, but also whether hundreds of millions of dollars of investor funds currently frozen may be forfeited and returned to his alleged victims.” Hittner ruled Dec. 22 that Stanford has sufficiently recovered from a head injury suffered in a jailhouse assault and an addiction to anxiety medications prescribed to him by prison doctors after the attack. The judge delayed Stanford’s original trial date last January and ordered him into a prison rehabilitation program after finding Stanford’s medical conditions had made him incompetent to understand the proceedings or assist his defense team. Stanford, 61, has been detained as a flight risk since his June 2009 indictment on charges he defrauded investors of more than $7 billion through allegedly bogus certificates of deposit at his Antiguan bank. The former financier has denied all wrongdoing.  [Reuters 12/28/11]