File Photo
Murder victim Dr. Toor.
It has become the norm in the murder case of Dr. Lishan Wang to expect the unexpected.
Even so, everyone from the judge on down was taken aback when they learned that without warning, Dr. Wang was moved to the state’s Supermax facility at Somers, where the state’s male death-row inmates are kept and where solitary confinement is not unusual.
Just before a court hearing began in New Haven Superior Court on Church Street on Monday, Judge Patrick Clifford and Senior State’s Attorney Eugene Calistro, Jr., learned from Jeff LaPierre, Dr. Wang’s stand-by public defender, that he had been transferred to Northern Correctional Institute some time between his last court appearance a few weeks ago and Monday.
Dr. Wang had been incarcerated at Suffield’s MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institute, considered a high-security prison, until his transfer to Northern Correctional Institute in Somers.
It turned out that correction officials apparently decided to move a group of prisoners, all with bail over $2 million, to the state’s highest-security facility.
In an effort to return Dr. Wang to MacDougall-Walker, the judge moved quickly to drop Dr.Wang’s bond from $2 million to $900,000 cash bail so that he might qualify to return to his former prison cell.
Dr. Wang, 47, is charged with the murder of Dr. Vanjinder Toor (pictured above), a former colleague at the Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center in New York. At the time he was shot to death outside his Branford condo on April 26, 2010, he was 34, a father and a post-doctoral fellow at Yale. His then-pregnant wife witnessed the shooting. She was shot at too, but Dr. Wang missed. Dr. Wang has alleged Dr. Toor and other Kingsbrook doctors and officials caused his firing in 2008 and ended his medical career.
Dr. Wang is a high-profile indigent defendant who is representing himself in a murder case. State prison officials know all about the case because Judge Clifford and Calistro have sought to get him access to computers and other legal research materials when he was at MacDougall so that the trial might someday get underway. Dr. Wang also has sued the corrections department in U.S. District Court.
Getting additional access to a computer proved possible but difficult at MacDougall. So the judge had Dr. Wang delivered to the New Haven courthouse on Church Street to work on a computer provided by Calistro either before or after his hearings. (Click here to read that story.) At one point an attorney from the state attorney general’s office came to court to discuss the prison issues.
Faced with this latest unexpected twist in a long delayed murder case, Judge Clifford along with Calistro and LaPierre met in chambers for 45 minutes to decide what to do next.
Afterwards, at about 2:45 p.m., Judge Clifford entered his courtroom along with the attorneys. Dr. Wang was brought into court. The judge began by discussing Dr. Wang’s transfer to Northern. Dr. Wang looked tired. He wore his usual orange jump suit.
The judge asked Dr. Wang how he felt about the move. Dr. Wang said he was not at all happy.
Reducing Bail Idea
The judge said he was going to try to have Dr. Wang transferred back to MacDougall-Walker — but noted he had no guarantees. The reason for the transfer, the judge said, is that it would be much more difficult for Dr. Wang to prepare for trial from the state’s maximum security prison.
But first, he said he had learned that he had to reduce Dr. Wang’s $2 million bail because only those prisoners with $2 million or higher bail had been transferred to Northern. The judge told Dr. Wang that if bail was reduced to under $1 million “then they might take you back to MacDougall.”
Judge Clifford gave no guarantee it would work, but he did reduce Dr. Wang’s $2 million bond to a $900,000 cash-only bail — with the proviso that if raised, it could only be posted at the New Haven courthouse with notice that would allow the judge to first review it. Calistro said he had no objection.
The judge also observed that Dr. Wang had a number of boxes (11 in all) that contained his legal research for this case and others he is involved in. Calisto said in court that the boxes “may not have followed him to Northern.” The judge wanted additional information about the boxes, he said. Calistro said after court ended that efforts were under way to talk to the wardens at both institutions.
Dr. Wang’s decision to dismiss the public defender’s office and represent himself has created serious issues for the public defender’s office, the court system and the prison system. The public defender’s office has refused any funding, specifically for expert witnesses, a position the office repeated again in court Monday.
Judge Roland D. Fasano, who presided over the case before Judge Clifford, told Dr. Wang that the judiciary budget would pay for an investigator once the public defender’s officer assumed a stand-by legal status. That decision is still in effect.
Who Pays For Wang’s Expert Witnesses?
At Monday’s hearing, Judge Clifford addressed one of Dr. Wang’s motions, a motion that centered on Dr. Wang’s belief that Judge Fasano also ordered expenditures for a psychiatrist and other experts. “I don’t think he did,” Judge Clifford said explaining he had discussed the issue with Judge Fasano. If he had, he added, he was now reversing his colleague’s order in light of the developing fee issues.
Attorney Debra Del Prete Sullivan also was in court to represent the public defender’s office. She confirmed that the public defender’s office objected to using any public funds to pay for Dr. Wang’s experts because a stand-by public defender has only a limited legal role in a case.
“Taxpayer dollars should not be used to represent those we are not representing. He is entitled to experts. The question is who pays?” At issue is whether payments for experts should come from the public defender’s office or the judiciary’s budget. Del Prete Sullivan said: “We will object to any funds coming out of our budget unless there is a change in the statute.”
Constitutional Questions Raised
Judge Clifford then discussed the thorny constitutional question as to whether an indigent pro se defendant is entitled to public funds for expert witnesses if he rejects the public defender as counsel representing him. If he is entitled to public funds, then the next question is who pays, the public defender’s office which doesn’t want to pay or the judicial branch.
Judge Clifford then asked Calistro, the prosecutor, to work on what he is now terming a “reservation,” a constitutional question to be addressed by the state’s appellate or the state supreme court. All sides would have to agree on this document before it is sent to a higher court. Calistro told the Eagle yesterday he was still working on the document.
The judge observed in court that “this is a very unique and rare legal proceeding. I have never attempted this before an appellate court.” The judge went on to say that it was necessary to try to appoint assigned counsel to argue the constitutional questions given the internal roadblocks the court faces. Who pays is a question that must be resolved if the trial is to go forward.
The judge said that this Monday, July 29 at 2 p.m., when the hearing resumes, he will assign outside counsel to represent Dr. Wang on this constitutional issue. Dr. Wang has agreed to this outside representation but not to having a public defender represent him in this aspect of the case.
The judge told the court that the attorney he has selected to bring this unusual action is Max Simmons, a criminal defense attorney at the law firm of Attorney Diane Polan in New Haven. Simmons is expected to attend the Monday court session.
###