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Superior Court Judge Thomas O’Keefe, Jr., took two major actions in the Dr. Lishan Wang murder case yesterday. He declared Dr. Wang not competent to stand trial and kept him at a psychiatric hospital and he appointed a health care guardian to help decide if Dr. Wang will receive anti-psychotic drugs against his will.
The judge acted after hearing testimony for two hours from Dr. Mark Cotterell, a psychiatrist who oversees all mental competency cases at Connecticut Valley Hospital’s Whiting forensic division in Middletown. Dr. Cotterell told the court that at this time, “We find him not currently competent.”
Dr. Wang was arrested more than five years ago, 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. 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.
The Judge’s Observations
Judge O’Keefe observed that he has been a trial judge for more than 40 years. “My charge is to get this case to trial. I have a lot of experience to get it from pre-trial to trial….but I have not been able to make any progress with this individual because there is a personality or psychiatric disorder which prevents him from cooperating with the court. He can’t do it,” he said.
Dr. Cotterell’s written report on Dr. Wang’s competency had been submitted to the court and to the attorneys in the case before the hearing began. They had read it. But Dr. Wang who was brought to court two hours late was only given a copy to read after he arrived at the courthouse. He seemed stunned and sat silently in the well of the courtroom between his attorneys, face buried in his hands, eyes closed for virtually the entire two hour court session.
After hearing Dr. Cotterell, The judge agreed with Senior Assistant State’s Attorney Eugene Calistro, Jr., who said Dr. Wang’s competency had not been restored. “We cannot even get to the question of pro se representation,” said Calistro, who led the hearing. He told the court Dr. Wang is unwilling or unable to agree to medication and he recommended that a health care guardian be appointed to handle the “possible issue of forced or involuntary medication.”
Chief Public Defender Thomas Ullmann, who moved months ago to undo Dr. Wang’s court approved pro se status and who has been appointed by the judge to represent him, chose his words carefully. “On behalf of Dr. Wang, I am objecting. He is opposed to forced medication upon him. I am objecting.” The judge ended Dr. Wang’s pro se status in April.
Judge O’Keefe observed that he has had a good deal of interaction with Dr. Wang since assigned the case as trial judge. He took over the case in November, 2014. “I myself have experienced every single thing described by the doctor. I have plenty of context now.”
In the end the judge decided that so-called “normal treatment is not going to work here. We would just be wasting our time.” He said the law anticipates these types of situations. Statutes allow “for the involuntary medication of a defendant.” To that end he invoked the relevant statute and appointed Dr. Gail Sicilia as Dr. Wang’s health care guardian. Both prosecution and defense agreed on her appointment. The judge said Dr. Sicilia had 30 days to file her findings and recommendations regarding psychiatric medication. The report is due Oct. 9 and a hearing is now scheduled for that date.
Dr. Cotterell Then and Now
Unlike his testimony in February 2011, when he found Dr. Wang competent to stand trial, Dr. Cotterell came to a different conclusion this time, four years and many difficult legal challenges and detours later.
In fact, in coming full circle he agreed with a psychiatrist hired by the public defender’s office in 2011 that Dr. Wang did not understand the charges against him and could not assist his attorney in his defense. Had he come to this conclusion in 2011, Dr. Wang would not have been able to represent himself.
In 2011 Superior Court Judge Roland D. Fasano had considered, but rejected the testimony of Dr. Peter T. Morgan, of the Yale School of Medicine, the expert called by the public defender’s office. Back in 2011 Dr. Morgan drew a far more devastating portrait of Dr. Wang’s mental condition than did Dr. Cotterell. He said then that Dr. Wang suffered from a serious psychotic disorder, observed that Dr. Wang was delusional and said he should be on anti-psychotic drugs. Click here to read the story.
In court yesterday, Dr. Cotterell came around to Dr. Morgan’s way of thinking though neither Dr. Morgan’s findings nor his name was mentioned in court. Now Dr. Cotterell described Dr. Wang as rigid, fixed, a man with a persecution complex.
Calistro led the hearing and asked Dr. Cotterell if Dr. Wang showed five out of the seven symptoms of a paranoid personality disorder. He replied, “Yes.”
Cotterell’s conclusion in 2015: “Our opinion is that he would have difficulty following the rules of the court,” Cotterell said.
Calistro then asked Dr. Cotterell about the difference between Dr. Wang back in 2011 and Dr. Wang now since Dr. Cotterell had testified in 2011.
“He was different from what he was back then…. His presentation is certainly different than it was back then,” Dr. Cotterell replied.
Back in June, Dr. Cotterell won a three-month continuance to present his psychiatric evaluation to the court. This time around Dr. Cotterell and his team were asked to give Dr. Wang a more detailed mental examination in part because the judge asked that the issue of Dr. Wang’s competency to represent himself be addressed.
The issue now is whether Dr. Wang can be restored to mental competency so that he may stand trial. Dr. Cotterell said it was his opinion that Dr. Wang’s competency can be restored by staying at the hospital and by taking certain medications, which so far Dr. Wang has refused to do.
Asked if he had discussed medications with Dr. Wang, Dr. Cotterell said he had. Dr. Wang “responded that he did not share our concerns. He did not have the problems we suggested to him he had and he did not want any medication.
“We do believe that appropriate use of medications might be useful,” he added, saying they work in 50 to 70 percent of the time.”
Throughout the two-hour long hearing, Dr. Wang who was wearing a sweatshirt and sweat pants, remained passive. Occasionally he slept. He appeared depressed, showing none of the engagement evident when he represented himself.
In April, the judge ordered Dr. Wang transferred from MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution to the hospital. In his letter to the judge seeking an extension of time until yesterday’s hearing, Dr. Cotterell said Dr. Wang was not co-operating with the hospital team, refusing various tests, including MRI’s, CAT scans and blood tests. Dr. Cotterell also told the judge that the hospital team had hired a Mandarin psychologist to evaluate Dr. Wang. Her report was outlined in court yesterday but not made public.
As the case entered its trial stage over the last year, Ullmann, the chief public defender, became concerned about a number of legal issues. He said in court papers that if the case continued this way it would be in violation of federal and state law. He asked that he be appointed to serve as Dr. Wang’s attorney, a move that infuriated Dr. Wang. Judge O’Keefe agreed to end Wang’s self-representation and appointed Ullmann to represent him last spring.
Wang continues to demand that he be allowed to represent himself. In his most recent motion, filed on Sept. 4, Dr. Wang calls Dr. Toor and Bill Cosby, the entertainer, “abusers and law breakers.” He said “many people wanted to defend them, protect them and to blame their victims.
“It just proves this is an upside down world. Their victims are not insane. The court and/or the society are insane. Both the courts and the society are desperately protecting Dr. Toor and Mr. Cosby’s skeletons in their closets because both of them are part of this hypocritical world: the wicked prosper; the innocent are ruined.”
There is no trial date on the horizon.
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