With Permission
Dr. Toor.
Dr. Lishan Wang was transported early yesterday from the MacDougall Correctional Institution in Suffield to New Haven Superior Court on Church Street so that he could evaluate evidence on a laptop before a scheduled 2 p.m. court appearance.
Dr. Wang represents himself in a murder case. Getting him a laptop, a necessity to move the three-year-old case along, is now a major issue.
So Superior Court Judge Patrick Clifford devised a plan. Or so he thought.
Dr. Wang is accused of shooting to death Dr. Vanjindeer Toor (pictured), a former colleague of his at Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center in New York. The murder took place outside Dr. Toor’s Branford condo on April 26, 2010. Dr. Toor, 34, was a post doctoral fellow at Yale when he was killed. Dr. Wang has alleged Dr. Toor and other Kingsbrook doctors and officials caused his firing in 2008 and ended his medical career.
At 3 p.m., when the Wang hearing began an hour late, Judge Clifford disclosed that Dr. Wang once again encountered a laptop block. Someone was needed to monitor Dr. Wang once his handcuffs were removed so that he could use the laptop. Nobody could be found. Even the judge was in the dark. “I didn’t know this was an issue today until this afternoon,” Judge Clifford told Dr. Wang as he stood before him in an orange jump suit after court convened.
Dr. Wang has insisted on representing himself in his murder case, a decision that is creating layers of confusion and indecision within the state court system, one that includes the public defender’s office, the correctional system and the Connecticut judicial marshals office, which oversees courthouse and judicial security. Monday, the judge said, turned out to be “a waste of time.”
Besides court personnel, Dr. Wang had to be placed in a secure room. Turned out that wasn’t easy. Efforts to find monitors be they marshals or a public defender, didn’t happen.
The court session got underway an hour late. That’s because the judge was meeting in chambers with the prosecutor, Senior Assistant State’s Attorney Eugene Calistro Jr., and Jeff LaPierre, who is serving in a limited capacity as Dr. Wang’s stand-by public defender. They discussed a variety of issues.
Expert Witness Problem
When the court session began, Judge Clifford raised a thorny constitutional issue that has emerged in this case. Once Dr. Wang decided to represent himself, the public defender’s office has refused to provide him with any funds for required expert witnesses because the office does not represent him. And the judiciary system appears to have no funds for this purpose.
The constitutional question is whether an indigent pro se defendant is entitled to public funds for expert witnesses and if so, whether the funds should be paid by the public defender’s office or the judicial department, the judge said.
Judge Clifford then asked Calistro, the prosecutor, to work on a “stipulation of fact” that all sides would have to agree to before presenting the constitutional question to the State Supreme Court for a ruling before a trial begins.
In order for Dr. Wang to participate in this process, Judge Clifford wants to appoint a special public defender to represent Dr. Wang. Dr. Wang previously agreed to this step. Click here to read the story.
However, a new issue has developed with regard to a special public defender, the judge said in court. He observed that “there could be a conflict” between LaPierre, the stand-by public defender and his own office and a special public defender from that office who could be appointed but would be required to evaluate his own employer’s response to the Wang case. The judge did not raise the prospect of appointing a private attorney instead of a special public defender to represent Dr. Wang.
Calistro told the judge he would get started on a stipulation of fact.
Latest Wang Motion
Dr. Wang also filed a 45-page motion with exhibits that would have the court issue a subpoena for Kings County Medical Center in New York “to testify about Dr. Wang’s mental state and to clear Dr. Wang’s name.”
Dr. Wang claimed that during the time he was a resident at the hospital, he was persecuted by other doctors and defamed. He charged that certain doctors committed “glaring and heinous medical malpractices with malice of aforethought to harm Dr. Wang as a whistleblower.” He said he was wrongfully terminated as part of “retaliatory action.”
Dr. Wang also sought to show that his mental state changed dramatically after the May 22, 2008 termination. Speaking in the third person he said “before that he was functioning as a competently trained physician. After that date he suffered mental distress, anxiety, panic attacks, depression and other maladies.”
The judge told Dr. Wang he would not issue a subpoena because Dr. Wang had spoken of a hospital, not individuals. The judge also said he could not issue a subpoena when there is no hearing scheduled. “I am going to deny this motion without prejudice, “he told Dr. Wang. This means it can be filed against a later date. The judge noted that a trial was far off.
The Judge’s Lap Idea
As the court session was nearing an end, Judge Clifford had an idea. Since Dr. Wang was now in an empty courtroom, why not simply lock the courtroom and ask the three or four court officers on duty in the court to watch Dr. Wang as he used a laptop, assuming one could be found?
The judge suggested that a laptop be brought to his courtroom on the sixth floor. He asked LaPierre to get the relevant videos onto the laptop. Court officers would stand by. Dr. Wang would get an hour to work, the judge said.
“This is a safe place to do this,” the judge said.
Calistro agreed. “It’s a start.”
The official court session ended at 3:30 p.m. before we could learn if the judge’s idea worked.
The judge set June 5 for the next court date. Judge Clifford asked that Dr. Wang be brought in early in the day so that he could prepare for trial using a laptop.
It was the same order he issued last time.
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