The Mad Bomber of New York (40 page)

Despite lucid and coherent testimony from Metesky himself at the hearing that he had personally and independently navigated the intricate waters of a habeas corpus petition and the even more complex matter of an appeal from its denial, two months later, the Dutchess County judge again dismissed the petition. “In our opinion,” wrote the court, “[Metesky] has failed to establish that he possesses the requisite appreciation of the nature of the crimes with which he is charged. We further hold that he remains incapable of adequately assisting and contributing to [his] defense.”

Now sixty-three years old, George Metesky was once again remanded to the custody of Matteawan State Hospital “for further care and treatment.” Though never brought to trial or convicted on any criminal charge, it seemed that he was destined to remain institutionalized for the rest of his life.

Beginning in the mid-1960s a wave of court decisions, some from the United States Supreme Court itself, swept through the area of mental health and confinement. An enlightened age of reform began to ascend and a recognition of the constitutional rights of the accused—even those committed and long forgotten in state mental institutions—emerged. With specific regard to Matteawan and other similar institutions operated under the control of the Department of Corrections, a series of cases from 1966 through the end of that decade established that the criminally insane who were subjected to the harsh confinement of so called “mental prisons” were entitled to the same procedural rights and safeguards as those provided to civilly committed non-criminals. “We have, thankfully, come a long way from the days when ignorance induced fear of the mentally ill,” wrote federal circuit judge Irving R. Kaufman in 1969. “As great strides in psychiatric knowledge have been paralleled by evolving concepts of due process, humane procedures for the commitment and treatment of the mentally ill have replaced snake pits and witch hunts.”

Buttressed by these and other court decisions that recognized the limitations of state-run facilities to indefinitely intern the criminally insane without the provision of certain procedural safeguards, George Metesky once again took on the system—this time in an all-out effort to gain his freedom. In November 1970, Metesky personally and without the benefit of counsel filed a petition with the Supreme Court of New York in New York County against District Attorney Frank Hogan, seeking a dismissal of the pending 1957 indictment against him. In a long and often incoherent handwritten plea, Metesky again berated his lawyers, Matteawan, and the entire court system for his mistreatment and unjust confinement. He accused the district attorney of perpetuating “a tacit working agreement with Matteawan” to keep its patients perpetually institutionalized, and he accused the facility's psychiatrists of being insane themselves. Arguing that he possessed the “sanity, intelligence and fortitude” to fight the charges against him, but noting that New York County had made no attempt to bring him to trial in the thirteen years since his indictment, Metesky stated that “elemental decency” required the dismissal of the charges. In essence, he attempted to force the prosecutor's hand.

The district attorney's office filed an opposition statement claiming that it was Metesky's own incompetence to stand trial that prevented them from logically proceeding on the indictment, and in reliance the court quickly denied Metesky's petition. Metesky promptly filed a supplement to his petition that claimed that District Attorney Hogan had engaged in forgery of documents and other unspecified criminal acts. Again, he implored the judge to dismiss the indictment against him. “The laws are explicit,” scolded Metesky. “[A]ll that is needed—is honest enforcement.” When the supplement was ignored by the court, Metesky again brought the matter to the attention of the Appellate Division, which this time refused to hear the matter.

In the coming months Metesky continued his legal battles against Matteawan, Frank Hogan, and the entire New York penal system with a flurry of claims and petitions, filed in the Federal District Court. In each of these cases he spewed his angry and conspiratorial diatribe in letters and pleadings that, for the most part, accomplished nothing in the way of persuasive factual or legal argument. Institutionalized and clearly unrecovered, Metesky, now sixty-eight years old, seemed to be floundering in a sea of legal frustration and ill will, while moving not one step closer to freedom.

In the winter of 1971 the cause of George Metesky and nearly five hundred other indicted but never tried inmates of Matteawan State Hospital drew the attention of a young and idealistic lawyer by the name of Kristin Booth Glen. For several years Glen had eyed New York's statutory scheme of institutionalized detention of the criminally insane with skepticism and concern. She researched the conditions at Matteawan and waited for the right opportunity to challenge what she viewed as an unconstitutionally applied system of confinement. Working with the progressive minded law firm of Rabinowitz, Boudin & Standard in association with the National Lawyers Guild and the Bill of Rights Foundation, both left-leaning civil rights advocacy organizations, Glen recognized that in George Metesky and others like him at Matteawan she had found the appropriate representatives to challenge the system.

In a class action suit filed in the Federal District Court in New York City, Glen, buttressed by lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union, argued that the New York statutes allowing Metesky and the other similarly situated inmates to be confined at the whim of the institution without the right to a jury trial on the question of whether they were in fact dangerous amounted to a violation of the equal protection clause of the United States Constitution. The case would be the first step in a journey that would ultimately change the face of mental health facilities in New York and beyond.

Shortly after the filing of the federal class action, the director of Matteawan, in a separate and unrelated but legally required exercise, filed a notice with the Supreme Court of New York in Kings County stating that, though Metesky had been incarcerated at the facility for nearly fifteen years, he intended to retain custody of Metesky as a “dangerous incapacitated person” as that classification was defined under newly enacted and applicable New York statutes. Under the new law, which was designed to provide some measure of procedural safeguard to institutionalized inmates, Metesky was given ten days to file a request for a hearing before a judge on the issues raised in the notice. The filing would set into motion a flurry of legal activity that would go to the very essence of Matteawan's system of retention.

Immediately, Metesky responded with a ten-page, bold-lettered seething denunciation of Matteawan and its staff. “AS THE COURT WELL KNOWS,” wrote Metesky, “MATTEAWAN STATE HOSPTIAL WHICH IS UNIVERSALLY DAMMED—NEVER PRAISED BY ANY FAIR-MINDED JUDGE, HAS NO REASON FOR ITS HYPOCRITICAL EXISTENCE.” As to the merits of the actual notice, Metesky responded, “I AM FULLY COMPETENT TO STAND TRIAL AND HAVE BEEN COMPETENT TO DO SO FOR YEARS. I HAVE BEEN PREVENTED FROM ESTABLISHING MY SANITY THROUGH THE USE OF CRIMINAL AND UNCONSTITUTIONAL MEANS . . . I DISPUTE DR. JOHNSTON'S CLAIM TO BEING A DANGEROUS INCAPACITATED PERSON AND ASK . . . THAT A JURY TRIAL BE GIVEN ME ON THIS MATTER.” Metesky's document, rambling and accusatory as it was, satisfied the minimum requirements for a judicial hearing on whether or not he was, in fact, a “dangerous incapacitated person,” and on January 25 a New York Supreme Court judge ordered that Metesky be transferred to the Kings County Hospital for the purpose of a future hearing on this issue within the court's jurisdiction.

On April 14, 1972, word came from the Federal District Court that a three-judge panel led by Judge Morris Lasker had ruled in favor of Metesky and the other class action plaintiffs. The Matteawan scheme of perpetually retaining its inmates without first obtaining a jury finding of dangerousness had come to an end. It was cause for jubilation for Metesky and his attorneys, but freedom was still a distant and fleeting hope. A jury pronouncement that an inmate was not dangerous, as defined by the statute, would simply allow a transfer to a civil institution under the auspices of the Department of Mental Hygiene. Though the prospects for treatment and recovery were greatly enhanced at such a facility, it was far from the finding of competence that would then be required as a prerequisite to freedom. Metesky's legal battles, it seemed, were only just beginning.

Matteawan was hesitant to relinquish the control that it had wielded for so many years. As the legal focus shifted from the federal courts back to the state courts of New York, the institutional directors together with the Kings County prosecutors opposed every effort in Metesky's bid for due process. As the hearing on Matteawan's bid for continued retention approached, and aware of the new safeguards imposed by the federal court, a new local attorney was assigned to act on Metesky's behalf. Capable and learned in the law, Irving Engel of Brooklyn was well known and respected in the criminal court system of New York. Though court appointed and meagerly compensated, Engel valiantly came to the aid of his new client and prepared a cogent and persuasive argument against Matteawan's claim that Metesky was a dangerous incapacitated person.