With Permission
Dr. Toor
Dr. Lishan Wang, accused of shooting his former colleague Dr. Vanjinder Toor (pictured with son) to death on April 26, 2010, has filed two new federal lawsuits while at the same time preparing to represent himself in his murder case.
He is charged with gunning down Dr. Toor, then 34, who was a post-doctoral fellow at Yale-New Haven Hospital.
In the last two months Wang, 47, has filed two lawsuits in federal court, one in New Haven against the Branford police department and the state police and one in Hartford against the state Department of Corrections.
He has accused the Branford police of stealing between $2,500 and $3,000, funds he kept for emergency use. He kept the money, in $100 bills, he said, in a portfolio in a van he used to drive from Georgia to Dr. Toor’s home in Branford in 2010. He wants the money returned, he said, so he can give it to his wife and three children. Police say they recovered a total of $712.00 from the van they stopped shortly after the murder.
Dr. Wang also filed a civil rights lawsuit against correctional officers at the MacDougall correctional institution in Suffield, where he is currently housed. He asserted they engaged in “excessive force and torture” on March 8, 2011. He says his left thumb has been numb for about one year.
His growing legal practice — -he is not an attorney — was disclosed in New Haven Superior Court yesterday during a pre-trial hearing that lasted nearly three hours. Overall the hearing centered on Dr. Wang’s motion #6, which outlined his jailhouse needs in preparing for his murder trial. No date has been set. His requests included additional time to use a computer and his need for additional time at a typewriter and at a law library. He also sought more space in his cell to store legal documents. (The limit is five boxes.)
No mention was made during the court session that April 26 marked the third anniversary of the Toor murder. Dr. Wang is also accused of attempting to shoot Dr. Toor’s wife outside their Branford condo. He and Dr. Toor were colleagues at Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center in New York. Wang has alleged Dr. Toor and other Kingsbrook officials caused his firing and ended his medical career.
Two New Federal Lawsuits
Federal lawsuits filed by indigent prisoners are taken seriously by U.S. District Court judges. Under the law a federal judge is required to review a prisoner’s civil rights lawsuit and act on it. In addition, defendants who are pro se, acting as their own attorney as Dr. Wang is, get additional help. A judge must assume the truth of the allegations until proven otherwise. There is also a pro se prison litigation office and Dr. Wang’s federal briefs suggest he had help in preparing them.
“Obviously you have been very active,” state Superior Court Judge Patrick Clifford observed of the two new lawsuits as he and Dr. Wang began what turned out to be a long discussion. Throughout, Dr. Wang stood at the defense table. He was wearing a bright orange jumpsuit. His handcuffs were removed for the court session and he gesticulated with his hands to make points. He spoke without looking at any documents.
Dr. Wang’s federal suit against the Branford and the state police (he has a third federal lawsuit pending against Kingsbrook in Brooklyn, which he filed before the murder,) claims the Branford and/or state police stole his money after officers from each department inspected the van. He said he informed his former public defenders about the cash issue. Police Chief Kevin Halloran told the Eagle that our request for comment was the first he had heard of the lawsuit. “I will look into this,” he said.
The second federal lawsuit accuses the state department of corrections, which oversees Dr. Wang’s prison incarceration, of a variety of violations, including being denied two legal envelopes he sought and being sent to segregation for two weeks as punishment. He says medical attention after he was beaten up was poor. He also noted that he was mocked when he went to church when housed at the Garner Correctional Institution in Newtown.
Housekeeping Issues for a Pro Se defendant
Steven Strom, an assistant attorney general who is assigned to the corrections department, and Capt. Kevin Manley, who is assigned to the prison system, came to court to provide a road map to help the judge answer Wang’s requests. One major issue was finding a computer that could handle both DVDs and CDs so that Wang might view evidence turned over to him.
The judge noted that the prison computers were probably old. “The judges’ computers are old, too,” he observed. By the end of the session Strom and Capt. Manley said they would see what they could do to find a computer Dr. Wang might use. Failing that, he will be brought back to court to use one there, the judge said.
The prosecutor, Senior Assistant State’s Attorney Eugene Calistro Jr., told the judge he has long offered a computer so that Dr. Wang could look at the evidence the state turned over to him. But, Calistro noted, “We have never been asked.”
At issue in both prison and court locations is security and confinement while Dr. Wang examines the evidence. Strom said access is available only at certain times a day and special favors for one inmate would not be viewed kindly by the remaining 119 inmates “who are also facing heavy charges.”
As for use of a typewriter, Strom noted that Dr. Wang was one of scores of prisoners who want access to a typewriter. He observed that Dr. Wang’s motions and paper attachments to his court filings had totaled about 5,000 pages so far, “all made at taxpayer’s expense.” The judge also observed that he had received hundreds of pages of typed motions.
During the course of the hearing Strom told the judge that that the law is clear that prisoners do not have the right to a typewriter. He observed that in Gideon v. Wainwright, a landmark case which guaranteed attorneys to indigent defendants in criminal cases, Gideon wrote to the U.S. Supreme court “in his own handwriting.”
Strom went on to note that Dr. Wang is now engaged “in a variety of legal actions.” He described Dr. Wang as a “demanding individual,” a description Dr. Wang took exception to. He described him as “confrontational with other inmates over the use of a room where he can use the typewriter or the computer. It is a room designed for a number of activities, Strom said.
Then it came down to a pen.
Dr. Wang said he needed one but couldn’t afford to buy one.
Capt. Manley said inmates may purchase pens in the commissary. He told the judge he would provide one “for no money.”
Judge Clifford attempted to explain to Dr. Wang that prison life is circumscribed.
“This is a prison. You are charged with murder. Would you like a typewriter in your cell? Yes. But that is not likely. I will encourage them to help you but I am not going to ask them to violate their polices.” Dr. Wang agreed. “I have never asked the department of correction to violate policies or treat me differently.” And, he noted to the judge, more than once, he was “allegedly” charged with murder.
When it came to Dr. Wang preparing his case and his need for a law library, Strom told the judge that according to a case decided by the Connecticut Supreme Court in 2000, Connecticut prisoners are not constitutionally entitled to a law library. “One of the consequences and dangers and disadvantages of giving up a public defender is what Mr. Wang is facing today,” he said.
Who Covers the Costs of Expert Witnesses?
One major issue looming over the case is how the trial can go forward if Dr. Wang has no viable way to pay for psychiatric and ballistics experts, two areas he identified as important to him. Once he gave up the public defender’s office as full-time counsel, he no longer has access to their funds. The state will not pay and it is unclear if the judiciary can or will pay.
In the afternoon session the judge suggested a legal route that would enable him to obtain a decision from a higher court on how to proceed. What Calistro, the state prosecutor, does not want is to go to trial without Wang’s experts and then have the trial fail.
To take this issue to a higher court requires the approval of both attorneys, Calistro and Dr. Wang. The case presents a unique legal question, the attorneys said. How does the state pay outside court costs for an indigent defendant who rejects the public defender’s office but is entitled to represent himself?
The judge said that if Dr. Wang agreed, the judge could appoint an attorney to represent him before a higher court, to file a brief and to argue his case, assuming Calistro agreed. The prosecutor did.
“Would you be inclined to agree to go to the Supreme Court?” the judge asked Dr. Wang. Dr. Wang agreed, but noted that any attorney representing him at the appeals level would not represent him at his trial. He reserved that right for himself.
The judge said he was aware of the distinction and by the end of the court session it appeared that a plan might be underway to seek higher court action regarding a plan for payment for Dr. Wang’s experts. Who they might be remained unclear. At one point Dr. Wang asked for a telephone book to look them up. At another point, he suggested he hire one of the psychiatrists who had previously examined him.
Before the hearing ended, Dr. Wang made yet another pitch to get the judge to approve some of his subpoenas seeking detailed information from e‑mails, to faxes, to anything on paper from officials and doctors at Kingsbrook. Dr. Wang keeps filing the same motions and the judge keeps denying them, saying they are overly broad and not relevant to his murder case. Dr. Wang finally asked the judge for legal guidance on the subpoena issue, but the judge was not in the position to advise him, he said.
“I am the gatekeeper. I am denying these because I don’t agree with you,” the judge said of Dr. Wang’s efforts to get massive amounts of information from these officials.
Dr. Wang said again, as he said in the past, that there were “things I cannot say because they are part of my defense.”
And that’s how it was left until the next court date, May 20 at 2 p.m.
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