With Permission
Dr. Toor
The impact of State v. Wang—a recent State Supreme Court decision that held an indigent defendant who chooses to represent is entitled to state funding — played out in New Haven Superior Court Tuesday. Dr. Wang himself took center stage.
During a two-hour hearing, Dr. Lishan Wang, whose long-delayed trial made legal history last month, appeared for the first time in Superior Court since the state’s highest court handed down a decision on how experts and other investigatory services connected to an indigent defendant will be funded in the state’s court system.
Under the high court’s ruling, the Public Defender Service Commission will approve and fund requests from those indigent defendants who choose not to be represented by the public defender’s office.
Dr. Wang, 48, is accused of gunning down Dr. Vanjinder Toor, then a post-doctoral fellow at Yale-New Haven Hospital and formerly Dr. Wang’s boss when both worked at a Brooklyn hospital. The alleged crime took place outside Dr. Toor’s Branford condo on April 26, 2010. He is representing himself at trial — in the process sparking questions to the court system about how to deal with him.
The case was in legal limbo for years until Superior Court Judge Patrick J. Clifford and Senior State’s Attorney Eugene Calistro, Jr., found a way to get the key holdup – how to provide trial funding for an indigent defendant – before the State Supreme Court for resolution. (Click here to read that story.) It took the state’s high court more than six months to rule following oral arguments.
Wang Submits 50 Motions
Dr. Wang, who is now in prison, came prepared Tuesday to argue his many motions, about 50 overall, the judge said, articulating his positions without the aid of an interpreter and gesturing boldly with his hands. Judge Clifford rejected some motions outright, saying they were not relevant; others he said he had ruled on in the past. He said some motions would be held until a new trial judge is appointed. Then he sent those motions he had ruled on to Jeffrey La Pierre, the stand-by public defender appointed by the court years ago to help Dr. Wang if asked.
La Pierre has had a limited role in the court process. But yesterday his role expanded. The judge told La Pierre that he should send the judge approved motions seeking funding to the Public Defender Services Commission for review. The commission may reject the request or not. The high court said in its decision that the stand-by public defender would help facilitate the funding process for the indigent defendant.
The first step involved the judge’s rulings on a series of Wang motions. He approved Dr. Wang’s motions in a variety of areas requiring expertise, including ballistics, DNA, gunshot residue, the medical examiner’s autopsy report, the GPS navigation system, psychiatric evaluation, and out-of-state subpoena requests.
Dr. Wang also raised the name of Dr. Henry Lee, as one of his potential experts. Dr. Lee’s expertise lies in the examination of evidence regarding a deceased person and the murder scene left behind. Dr. Lee is a world-renowned forensic scientist who teaches at the University of New Haven. The judge has observed in the past that it is rare to challenge autopsy reports but Dr. Wang has his own views.
Dr. Wang’s case is now in its fifth year. It was clear in court yesterday that the machinery now exists to begin the trial process, but it may not be as soon as the prosecutor wants it.
Calistro, the prosecutor, asked Judge Clifford to set Jan. 1, 2015, as the trial date. No date was set, but Calistro noted that victims have the right to a timely disposition of a case under Connecticut law. However, a Jan 1 trial date may not be realistic, defense attorneys said, because Dr. Wang has indicated he wants psychiatric evaluations, which typically take time to produce.
Judge Clifford has said numerous times that he wants the case to move along. “I am hoping to get the case more on a fast track,” he said. He noted the time it had taken, telling Dr. Wang “the public defenders did not think it was their job to fund your case. It turns out that your stand-by attorney now has a duty to go to the public defender’s commission to make a request for funds for experts. This was State v. Wang,” the judge said, citing the high court decision.
Dr. Wang wants Dr. Toor’s Telephone Records
At one point the judge reviewed Dr. Wang’s motion to subpoena Dr. Toor’s telephone records. The judge said, “If I order this subpoena that’s funds.” The judge said he found the request reasonable. He looked at La Pierre who was seated at a side table and said this motion should be handled by “the public defender’s commission, Mr. La Pierre.”
But La Pierre wasn’t sure if subpoenas were covered by the high court’s ruling.
He asked if the court, not the commission was “the gatekeeper of the subpoena.” The judge indicated that subpoenas were part of investigations and investigations fell under the new state ruling.
The judge said Dr. Wang believes there is some relevance for the phone records. “I think this is something that should be pursued by the public defender.”
La Pierre replied: “I will ask my office, on who is the gatekeeper and on the funding,” he told the judge.
In a subsequent interview with the Eagle, Thomas J. Ullmann, the chief public defender, said he had discussed this issue after it was raised in court and concluded the commission was the place to take the subpoena issue. “I don’t see any problem with that. Unless there is a conflict, we serve subpoenas in and out-of-state.”
The judge observed at one point that he plans to ask La Pierre each day what progress he has made in moving forward with the motions he approved. He also said he would see to it that La Pierre is not assigned to any other case because the Wang trial needs his full attention.
Ullmann said he walked into the courtroom Tuesday to speak to the judge on another matter and found the Wang case underway. He took a seat in the spectator section and listened.
He told the Eagle that in the end he agrees with the high court’s decision. “I think it is the most logical way to handle these things. And it makes sense because we do this all the time. So as much as we are not representing Dr. Wang, the fact of the matter is when he presents to us a list of experts or areas of expertise we have a battery of people all over the state and sometimes out-of-the state that we have tapped into for these kinds of requests in the normal course of our cases. So I think we are uniquely qualified to do that.
“There will always be issues about whether this motion or that one is frivolous or not. We have to put down an explanation as to whether funds should be funded or not, for our own cases and now for others.”
The judiciary has in the past absorbed some costs of self-representing defendants, and the public defender’s office had been reluctant to assume responsibility for an indigent defendant who insists on representing himself. For one thing, these costs – until now – were not in the public defender’s budget.
Now that issue has been resolved. Judge Clifford made it clear that the judiciary needed to remain impartial, as the high court pointed out. From this point on, the public defender’s office is back in the picture once again. Dr. Wang, noted as much, not happily.
Dr. Wang’s next court date is set for Aug. 4 at 2 p.m.
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