Judge Revokes Wang’s Attorney Status

In a day of high drama, Superior Court Judge Thomas V. O’Keefe Jr. ruled yesterday that Dr. Lishan Wang was not mentally competent to stand trial and was no longer to act as his own attorney in his murder case. Dr. Wang is accused of gunning down Dr. Vanjinder Toor, a 34-year-old Yale University doctor, five years ago this month.

To Dr. Wang’s dismay, Judge O’Keefe also appointed Chief Public Defender Thomas J. Ullmann to serve as Dr. Wang’s attorney for the foreseeable future. The judge did not rule out Dr. Wang’s possible self-representation sometime in the future but that scenario seems unlikely.

It was Ullmann who in February asked the judge to end Dr. Wang’s pro-se status, one Judge Roland D. Fasano agreed to in 2011. Ullmann maintained Dr. Wang was seriously mentally ill and would be unable to mount a trial. He said if the case went on this way it would be in violation of federal and state law and he asked that he be appointed to serve as Dr. Wang’s attorney, a move that infuriated Dr. Wang. As they sat in court yesterday, a few feet from one another, Dr. Wang ignored Ullmann, refusing to consult him on any issue, even if the judge suggested he do so.

State Prosecutor Agrees 

The judge took a series of other actions as well. He ordered that Dr. Wang be transferred from the MacDougall-Walker Correction Institution to the
Connecticut Valley Hospital in Middletown, the same hospital that purportedly restored him to competency the last time.

Doctors at Connecticut Valley later testified they prescribed no medication for Dr. Wang and did not actually diagnose him. From their point of view he was there for a mental competency examination, one they could and did prep him for. Nor did they question him closely about decision to represent himself. Click here to read the story.

Judge O’Keefe also ordered a diagnostic examination of Dr. Wang, a prelude of sorts to determine not only if he is competent to stand trial but if he is competent to lead a trial, to determine his defense and to choose a jury and witnesses for his case.
 
Wang, 49, is a Chinese citizen and father of three children, now ages 20, 15, and 12, the psychiatric report says. Besides charges that he gunned down Dr. Toor, he is also charged with shooting Dr. Toor’s then- pregnant wife. He missed. He is also charged with illegal possession of a variety of weapons.

Dr. Wang and Dr. Toor had worked together at Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center in New York City where a workplace dispute Dr. Wang attributes to Dr. Toor led to Dr. Wang’s dismissal from the hospital in 2008. His medical career fell apart and he blamed his troubles on Dr. Toor and other physicians at Kingsbrook. Police said he wanted to kill them as well. 

Senior Assistant State’s Attorney Eugene R. Calistrio, Jr., who presented the competency hearing, joined the defense’s position. After presenting witnesses, Calistro asked the judge to adopt the findings of the psychiatric team and to find Dr. Wang not competent to stand trial, at least for now, he added. 

Calistro examined two doctors who presented their findings in a report examining Dr. Wang’s mental state. They concluded he was paranoid and delusional and was so seriously mentally ill that he could not understand the charges against him or assist his attorneys, if appointed.

Judge O’Keefe then ruled, saying he accepted the conclusion of the psychiatric team. He observed he had seen signs of his illness when Dr. Wang appeared in court. ​“I find you are not competent to stand trial,” he told the defendant who did not look at him. 

Then Calistro took the issue a step further. Recognizing the five-year anniversary of the murder of Dr. Toor on April 26, 2010, Calistro said it was time to make sure this case gets tried. It has been on the docket 75 times. 

“Without a full diagnostic evaluation,” he told the judge, ​“we will be spinning our wheels. The court needs a full diagnostic work-up,” he said, referring without saying it to all the tests the hospital did not administer in the past.

The judge said that ​“competency involves the ability to represent yourself. I need to balance the Sixth Amendment requirements and all the other issues in the case. ​“And,” he added, ​“I have to take into consideration the issue raised by the prosecutor: Are we going to be repeating this process forever.”

At that point the judge agreed with both prosecution and defense and ordered the new tests, tests that will help to determine if Dr. Wang, even if brought back to mental competency, has the ability to mount a defense and oversee a trial while he acts as his own attorney. 

The attorneys for both sides said in court they want the Connecticut Valley Hospital to administer a comprehensive diagnostic examination of him within the next 60 days. The judge agreed and ordered the examination, which will be essential if the issue of pro-se representation is raised again. Dr.Wang’s next court date is set for May 21.

Yale Psychiatrist Offers Explanation

Dr. Madelon Baranoski, associate professor of psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine, where Dr. Toor worked at the time of his death, explained to Dr. Wang and to the court that while Dr. Wang is an extremely intelligent man ​“he has an impairment right now. Until the impairment is restored, he can’t think.” She added that if Dr. Wang distrusts his attorneys ​“he is not likely to give them information or advice. He won’t be likely to cooperate. If he feels so misrepresented he may not have a choice but to do it himself.“ As she spoke Dr. Wang’s eyes blinked quickly.

When Dr. Wang pressed to explain his reactions to the turn of events, Dr. Baranoski explained to him that he does not stay on track. Referring to his 12-page rebuttal to the competency report, she said, ​“Suddenly you were quoting the Boston marathon bomber. You were so far off the track. This was no longer a rebuttal but a loose association. That form of thinking conforms to mental issues of a psychotic magnitude.” 

In the afternoon session, after the judge declared Dr. Wang to be incompetent, he asked Ullmann to represent Dr. Wang. At one point Dr. Wang stood to speak, as he has done so many times in the past. The judge told him to take his seat because he was no longer representing himself. ​“This is unfair,” Dr. Wang declared. 

Then Ullmann suggested that the hearing be continued since all the doctors were in the room. He said he hoped to obtain information about Dr. Wang’s ability to act pro se and to put on a trial. Dr. Baranoski returned to the stand where she was asked to discuss a letter Dr. Wang had sent to Dr. Toor’s family.

“This letter,” she said, ​“shows Dr. Wang’s inability to form a common understanding of the situation. He is the victim,” he says in the letter. ​“The power of intrusion overrides the reality. And that would be present in how he would present his case to a jury,” she said, adding ​“a jury would not appreciate this. It is the crux of his disorder. He is very bright. He is very respectful but he cannot appreciate his understanding of the reality is not the reality.” 

“It is my opinion he has a serious mental illness of psychotic proportion. And we don’t have a past history,” she said. In addition, she noted that Dr. Wang had refused to let the competency team, or for that matter, his attorneys, examine his prior medical history. 

Over the last four years, when Dr. Wang was declared competent and Judge Fasano agreed to let him represent himself, it has become evident that the state’s criminal justice system is not prepared or able to handle this case.

Jump Suit Issue

It happened again yesterday before court got underway. When Dr. Wang was brought into the courtroom at 10:35 a.m. (the court and all the witnesses and attorneys were kept waiting for 35 minutes because the court clerk was assigned elsewhere,) Dr. Wang was not in his street clothes, as the judge had previously ordered, but in an orange prison jump suit.

Dr. Wang surveyed the courtroom and became livid when he saw the benches were filled with people. ​“So many people here and I am in a jump suit,” he shouted at Ullmann. Dr. Wang’s two identities, as prisoner and as attorney, had clashed in public. Ullmann quickly went to the judge’s chambers and then returned. ​“The judge wants him in regular clothes,” Ullmann said. Dr. Wang shouted again: ​“This is very unfair. Everybody will know,” he declared, staring at the audience in the gallery. The court officers re-handcuffed him and led him out the door. He was back to court within 10 minutes, this time dressed in a yellow shirt and grey pants. He wore his handcuffs and leg chains until the judge had them removed.

By day’s end, Dr. Wang appeared tired and bleak. From his point of view he had lost his right to represent himself and was back where he started nearly five years ago, once again declared incompetent to stand trial and no longer representing himself.

The only time he asked his Mandarin interpreter to step in to translate was when he had a question about that status.

“Is it very difficult to restore competency?” the interpreter asked Dr. Alexander Westphal, one of Dr. Wang’s examiners. 

“In some cases it can be difficult; in some cases less so. I do think there is a challenge….I do think there is a significant challenge here,” he said, adding, ​“I think medication can be helpful.”

In trying to explain to Dr. Wang and to the court the way he thinks, Dr. Baranoski told Dr. Wang during his cross-examination that his own rebuttal to the team’s competency report was the best evidence of his problem. 

“Instead of staying on track,” Dr. Baranoski told Dr. Wang from the witness box, ​“you went off … suddenly you were quoting the marathon bomber.”

She told Dr. Wang that he lost track on this issue and others, adding that she believed he suffered from ​“a very serious mental illness.” She said instead of believing it was a good thing to have a fine attorney represent him, Dr. Wang believes the public defender’s office has worked against him. ​“A delusion,” she observed ​“is a fixed, false, strongly held belief.”

She said the distrust he shows for the public defender’s office is now ​“reaching psychotic proportions. It is our opinion that you need treatment.”
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