Last week Dr. Lishan Wang went back in time to the day in 2008 when he and Dr. Vanjinder Toor, the man Dr. Wang is accused of shooting to death two years later, had an altercation in a hospital corridor at Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center in Brooklyn.
With the help of Senior State’s Attorney Eugene R Calistro, Jr., Dr. Wang received a DVD of the scene along with another containing information from AE & LY Medical Associates in Flushing, Queens, where Dr. Wang worked the year after he was fired from Kingsbrook. The two working DVDs mark the final items in the state’s discovery package to the defendant. The public defender’s office received them about two years ago.
Dr. Wang’s return to Kingsbrook via video was disclosed as he appeared for a hearing Wednesday in New Haven Superior Court. The hearing was unexpectedly moved up to earlier in the day. Dr. Wang waived the appearance of his interpreter, who like the press, arrived for a 2 p.m. hearing only to find it was over.
Dr. Wang, 47, has admitted in a police report that he stalked Dr. Toor, a research scientist at Yale Medical School, gunning him down outside his Branford condo in April, 2010. Dr. Wang, who lived in Georgia at the time with his wife and three children, told police he spoke to Dr. Toor before he opened fire. He is also charged with attempting to kill Dr. Toor’s wife. Police said Dr. Wang sought revenge against Dr. Toor and other physicians whom he blamed for ending his medical residency and his career in 2008.
Dr. Wang has insisted on representing himself despite many requests from Judge Patrick J. Clifford that he consider the help of a public defender. He has been limited in getting interstate subpoenas served for documents and witnesses in New York. They are needed for trial. While he has a stand-by public defender attorney, the attorney, Jeffrey LaPierre, is no longer actively participating in the murder trial. As a stand-by attorney he is not supposed to.
Prosecutor Steps In
Calistro served as an intermediary to obtain the DVDs in an effort, he said, to get the case moving. He took Dr. Wang’s 17 paragraph verbatim statement seeking the information and obtained the DVDs, after promising not to look at them. “We are not privy to any of this,” he said.
In a lawsuit Dr. Wang filed against Kingsbrook before the killing, he claimed he was fired in part because of his nationality. He said non-Chinese doctors mistreated him and other Chinese doctors. Dr. Toor is said to have been upset because Dr. Wang was not reachable for hours while on duty.
Dr.Toor is also said to have told Kingsbrook officials that Dr. Wang threatened him.
Dr. Wang viewed the two DVDs in an office at the public defender’s unit last week.
On Wednesday, Dr. Wang also submitted an additional 13 motions with the judge seeking various documents, photos and files. Some, it turned out, were not relevant, the judge said. Others had previously been handed over. Others were denied by the judge for a number of reasons, according to those present in court.
One of the motions the judge denied centered on Dr. Mark Cotterell, who testified at Dr. Wang’s competency hearing in December, 2010. It was Dr. Cotterell who decided three months after the former judge in the case Roland D. Fasano found Dr. Wang incompetent to stand trial, that Dr. Wang was, in fact, competent to stand trial. In December, 2011, Judge Fasano ruled that Dr. Wang could represent himself but at the time, the judge expected a more hands-on involvement from the public defender’s office.
Back in December, 2010, Senior Public Defender Scott Jones chastised Dr. Cotterell for the superficiality of his examination of Dr. Wang. Jones sought to show that Dr. Cotterell failed to explore key lines of questioning, including Dr. Wang’s decision to represent himself. If pursued, Jones suggested there might well have been a different outcome in the competency proceedings.
Dr. Wang has reviewed Dr. Cotterell’s testimony at his competency hearing and even though the doctor came down on Dr. Wang’s side, Dr. Wang said he disagrees with some of Dr. Cotterell’s statements and wants them “corrected.” But Judge Clifford said the psychiatric expert was entitled to make his own statements. He denied Dr. Wang’s motion.
Dr. Wang again sought the personnel files, along with background checks for Dr. Toor, who was 34, when he was killed. The judge denied the motion from the bench.
Dr. Wang also asked again for all photographs related to the case. Calistro told the court he had already supplied them, “once in black and white, and again in color.” The judge denied this motion, too.
It is clear from Dr. Wang’s motions to the court that no defense attorney is viewing his documents prior to him sending them out from prison. .
The case is proceeding extremely slowly as it enters its third year.
The judge set Feb. 21 at 2 p.m. for Dr. Wang’s next court date.
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