WTNH-Pool
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Dr. Lishan Wang, who has lost his right to represent himself at his murder trial after having been declared mentally incompetent, continues to act as his own attorney. At least that’s what motions filed this month in court show.
In anticipation of a “health care” hearing to be held today in New Haven Superior Court in which testimony will be taken “for the involuntary medication of a defendant,” Dr. Wang filed motions seeking a second opinion from an expert witness about a previous diagnosis “of the defendant’s schizophrenia.” He also filed a motion to subpoena his own medical records from the Whiting Forensic Division of Connecticut Valley Hospital, where he is now a patient. He has said in no uncertain terms that he is opposed to receiving anti-psychotic drugs against his will
Chief Public Defender Thomas J. Ullmann has been appointed by Superior Court Judge Thomas V. O’Keefe, Jr. to represent Dr. Wang. Dr. Wang asked Ullmann in a handwritten note to file at least one of the motions on his behalf. However, Ullmann’s name and signature and that of the public defender’s office are not part of any of the Wang motions. In April Judge O’Keefe ruled that Dr. Wang was not mentally competent to stand trial and was no longer to act as his own attorney in his murder case. The judge revoked Dr. Wang’s “pro se” status. Click here to read the story.
Over the course of five and one-half years, Dr. Wang has written hundreds of motions to the court so the fact that he is no longer representing himself and is not supposed to represent himself hasn’t stopped him. He says in one of the motions that taking care of his own “legal case ‘pro se’ is therapeutic…”
Dr. Wang was arrested in April 2010, and charged with the shooting death of Dr. Vanjinder Toor, a Yale doctor who previously had been Dr. Wang’s supervisor at a New York hospital. The case has yet to get to trial. Dr. Wang believes Dr. Toor was responsible for his firing in 2008. Dr. Wang travelled from Georgia where he lived with wife and children to Branford and lay in wait for Dr. Toor as he left his Branford condo one morning. He is also accused of attempting to kill Dr. Toor’s wife.
In September, Judge O’Keefe, the trial judge, appointed Dr. Gail Sicila as Dr. Wang’s health care guardian. She has had access to Dr. Wang’s psychiatric records and is expected to file a report in court today on her findings. She has also interviewed him, court papers say.
The report will also contain her recommendations regarding giving Dr. Wang psychiatric medication. In his order, the judge said Dr. Sicila will also include in her report “the risks and benefits of such medication, the likelihood and seriousness of any adverse side effects and the prognosis with and without such medication.”
Statutes allow for the forced or “involuntary medication of a defendant.” Both prosecution and defense attorneys agreed on her appointment. Senior Assistant State’s Attorney Eugene Calistro, Jr., the prosecutor in the case, will oversee the health hearing and call the witnesses, including Dr. Sicila.
In his motion for a second medical opinion on his mental state, Dr. Wang said he does “NOT have schizophrenia and respectfully requests to be seen by an independent psychiatrist with help of a Chinese interpreter for a second opinion.” He said no one at Whiting “had ever discussed with the Defendant about his so-called suffering from ‘schizophrenia,’ not even at the regular “group meetings: when the doctors and others talked to patients about the treatment plans.”
Dr. Wang said he had no behavior problems at Whiting. “‘Do no harm’ is the norm of patient care. It is brutal to drug the defendant before trial or simply because the State wants to win at trial.” He also writes that “What the defendant would like Your Honor to know is that the defendant is a normal person (at least lately) trying to live up to the expectation of good-willed people. He had NEVER thought he is better than anyone else without justifiable reasons…”
Dr. Wang took issue with the report of Dr. Mark S. Cotterell, which was entered into evidence in September, and asked that he allowed to cross-examine the doctors who prepared the report and to call other witnesses from Whiting. Click here to the read the story of his testimony. Dr. Cotterell is a psychiatrist who oversees all mental competency cases at Connecticut Valley Hospital’s Whiting forensic division in Middletown. Dr. Cotterell told the court in September that at this time, “We find him not currently competent.”
Dr. Wang takes issue with Dr. Cotterell’s current findings of his mental state saying his report “needs to be compared to the reports he had produced in 2010, 2011 and June 2015 and Dr. Wang’s mental health.”
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