Though Metesky had not stood trial and therefore had never formally asserted the insanity defense, the proceedings to test his competency delved into many of the same general issues and principles and elements of proof that such a defense would normally have examined. The high-profile case against Metesky would, accordingly, focus the spotlight of controversy upon the insanity defense in New York and become a springboard for change in the system.
At the time, insanity laws in the United States were undergoing a period of flux and instability. By the mid 1950s, the McNaughton rule, the long-standing law in New York and in most other jurisdictions that excused a defendant from criminal responsibility if he did not know the nature and quality of the act or that the act itself was wrong, was under attack by judges and many state legislatures. In some states the rule had been abandoned in favor of the Irresistible Impulse rule, which stated that even if the defendant cognitively understood the difference between right and wrong, he would nonetheless be excused if mental disease had caused him to lose the power to choose between right and wrong. And in 1954 the United States Court of Appeals expanded both rules in the famous Durham case, which held that “an accused is not criminally responsible if his unlawful act was the product of mental disease or mental defect.”
Using the bully pulpit of his high-profile ruling in the Metesky case, Judge Leibowitz admonished the New York legislature to adopt changes in current insanity laws to bring the state into accord with modern advances of scientific knowledge. “I trust that the State of New York will not remain in the tail end of the procession and cling to the McNaughton rule that was born back in the middle of the last century, when little or nothing was known about psychiatry.” To bolster his sermon on the issue, Leibowitz called upon Dr. LaVerne to expound upon the need for legislative changes in the realm of insanity as a legal defense. In a prearranged complement to Leibowitz’s ruling, the judge garrulously congratulated LaVerne as “a fine example of what a psychiatrist should be,” and invited him to step forward before the bar to offer whatever recommendations he may have on the issue.
“Metesky may have had a delusional mission which compelled him to explode bombs in order to arouse public interest,” began LaVerne, “but unwittingly he has performed a useful mission to society in focusing the spot-light upon a dire need of reform in legislation.” The doctor provided a brief history of the laws of insanity and cautioned that the current standards originated at a time when psychiatry was in its infancy and little was known of the workings of the human mind. With clinical advances in the field, and recognition of psychiatry as a credible adjunct of medicine, LaVerne stated that it was time for the law to catch up to the science. “The Metesky case poses a challenge in that it will expose the entire field of law . . . to a thorough re-evaluation. The present laws of our state that determine the question of sanity are cumbersome, obsolete, time-consuming, costly and may even harm an already mentally ill defendant.”
Criticism of New York’s statutory version of the McNaughton rule had actually begun shortly after its initial enactment in 1879 and reached a crescendo shortly after the Metesky case. Essentially, it was the dichotomy between medical insanity and legal insanity that drove the effort toward legislative reform. Modern psychiatry had shown that an individual could possess the requisite mental faculties to be aware of the nature and quality of his acts and to know that they are wrong, while at the same time suffer from a psychiatric disorder that removed the normal powers of self-restraint. Stated another way, one could technically know what he was doing yet still be utterly unable to stop it. The law, it was argued, did not account for this anomaly.
In October 1957, no doubt inspired in part by the controversy of the Metesky case, the first practical step in the reconsideration of New York’s insanity laws took place in the form of a conference sponsored by the State Department of Mental Hygiene with the cooperation of the Governor’s Council. In support of the reform effort, Governor Harriman stated at the conference:
Application of [the McNaughton Rule] results in the law treating an individual as sane even though he may suffer from mental defects which affect his otherwise rational activities . . . At present, criminal trials in which a defense of insanity is raised are marked by a conflict in testimony between psychiatrists who rely on the one hand on the McNaughton rule and on the other upon the standards set by medical and psychiatric science.
In the coming years specific proposals for legislative change were sponsored, and several advanced through committee and even to a vote of the New York Assembly, but each time the political sensitivity of the issue resulted in either withdrawal of the bill or outright rejection. Finally, in 1965, after consultation with the District Attorney’s Association, New York prosecutors, and prominent psychiatrists, a revision to the arcane McNaughton rule was proposed that seemed palatable to the critics. Though most supporters of reform had advocated adoption of a more liberal approach to the problem—a defense based upon the inability to conform one’s conduct to the requirements of the law—a compromise position was agreed upon and a newly revised standard for insanity in New York criminal cases was adopted by the state legislature.
With the enactment of section 30.05 of the New York Penal Law, the originally codified McNaughton rule was amended to prevent criminal responsibility for one’s conduct “if at the time of such conduct, as a result of mental disease or defect, he lacks substantial capacity to know or appreciate either: (a) the nature and consequences of such conduct; or (b) that such conduct was wrong.” The intent and effect of the new statutory provision was to relax the stringent requirements of the old rule and to allow the defense of insanity even when the defendant possessed some rudimentary understanding of the nature and quality of his act or that such act was indeed wrong. Though the statute was amended in 1984 to shift the burden of proof to the accused, the legal standard by which insanity was determined in New York remains to this day. The impassioned pleas of Judge Leibowitz and Dr. LaVerne had added to the chorus of change that would affect perhaps the most controversial issue in American criminal law.
As George Metesky lay helplessly in the tuberculosis ward of Matteawan State Hospital fighting for his life, however, he knew little of the dramatic changes in law, politics, and psychiatry his case would one day help to inspire.
He cared only for each struggling breath that he drew.
XXIV
MATTEAWAN
IF BELLEVUE WAS THE MENTAL HEALTH EQUIVALENT OF PURGATORY, Matteawan State Hospital stood as the hopeless embodiment of the blazing abyss itself. Behind the confused sprawl of interconnected redbrick chambers, the dazed and tormented souls that populated the human “storage bin” that was Matteawan endlessly roamed sterile corridors lacking purpose, lacking hope. The physical structure stood as a gloomy metaphor for insanity. Jutting dormers and stilted bastions formed the uneven roofline of each segmented wing of the complex and hauntingly coalesced into a taller main structure, the central focus of which was an extended crowned vertex lined with steel-barred windows. The foreboding arched entryway at the base of the main building might just as well have borne Dante’s ominous inscription to the gates of hell, “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.”
Prior to the age of reform that would give birth to institutionalized care for the mentally ill, horrific as many of those institutions may have been, the diagnosed insane were treated as criminals and were subject to torturous “treatments” typically aimed at exorcising evil spirits deemed to be at the root of the deviant behavior. Indeed, prior to the mid-nineteenth century little distinction had been drawn in New York between the criminally insane and the less dangerous non-criminal element suffering from mental illness. Both were universally and jointly treated in the New York State Lunatic Asylum in Utica—the first state hospital in New York.
As enlightened thought crept into the world of psychopathology, however, it became readily apparent to mental health professionals that integration of the two distinct populations presented
dramatic and unjust dangers to the civilly, as opposed to criminally, committed patients. In 1855 the New York Legislature, in recognition of these dangers, moved to segregate criminally insane inmates to institutions falling under the jurisdiction of the Department of Correction, and in 1859 the first State Lunatic Asylum for Insane Convicts was opened on the grounds of Auburn Prison. Those “twice cursed” with the stigma of mental illness and criminality would now be housed in hybrid institutions that would come to be known as “mental prisons.”
As the asylum at Auburn gradually reached capacity and then became overcrowded, legislative appropriation was made for a larger, more accessible facility in Beacon, New York. The nine-hundred-acre estate of John J. Scanlon, a locally famous race horse owner, was purchased and in 1892 the newly constructed, 450-bed asylum for insane criminals at Matteawan was unveiled among the placid backdrop of the Fishkill Mountains.
The stated purpose of Matteawan was to provide for the “isolation of dangerous and vicious patients.” According to one New York judge later reviewing an application for commitment to Matteawan, the internment function of the institution “gives primacy to the problems of security and custody and little or no recognition to the need of the patient for care and treatment.”
Through the years, the emphasis on mere confinement of the criminally insane, as opposed to recovery, would inevitably lead to allegations of maltreatment and abuse. Sadistic beatings and involuntary medication at the hands of unqualified and unlicensed staff would send a lifeless and tormented population into a vortex of physical and psychological hardship. Unlike the more benign conditions of the civil institutions operated by the Department of Mental Hygiene, the close confinement, inadequate staffing, and poorly equipped facilities of Matteawan regularly deprived patients of opportunities for treatments and therapies sorely demanded by their pathetic psychological circumstances. The dangers, restraints, and poor conditions to which the criminally insane were routinely exposed extended far beyond what they would endure even at some of New York’s harshest prisons. Grievous overcrowding and a gravely distressed atmosphere would contribute to a general environment of indignity and frustration that, according to one observer, would make Matteawan “a place more likely to drive men mad than to cure the insane.”
Into this hopeless and malevolent environment entered a legislative dereliction that often made commitment to Matteawan tantamount to a life sentence. Denied any effective therapeutic measures, patients often remained on the wards of the institution for years without care or improvement, and the self-fulfilling prophecy of prolonged hospitalization kept them sick. Until the mid-1960s, when reform would take hold, state hospitals for the criminally insane operated under a loose regulatory scheme that permitted the superintendent and internal staff of each institution to arbitrarily decide on the fate of each patient. Without the constitutional safeguards of due process that would eventually penetrate the system, patients were left to flounder on the stark wards of Matteawan and other state hospitals with little possibility of recovery or release. In 1965, prior to the introduction of reform measures, 703 patients of Matteawan had been confined for at least ten years, 306 for at least twenty years, 119 for at least thirty years, 29 for at least forty years, 4 for at least fifty years, and 1 for an astonishing sixty-four years. Many of these forgotten souls had become, in the words of one judge, “marooned and forsaken.”
As the sallow and haggard George Metesky was wheeled into the tuberculosis ward of Matteawan State Hospital in the early spring of 1957, it appeared unlikely that he would survive long enough to add to the facility’s grim longevity statistics.
Despite the abysmal record of treatment of the psychological needs of its residents, Matteawan ironically fared well in the physical care of its medically ill patients. With the development of modern multi-drug therapies for tuberculosis, many afflicted with the condition were stabilized and often improved at the facility and on hospital wards across the country. Though Metesky was administered the appropriate therapeutic remedies at Matteawan for his grave illness, it initially appeared that any recovery was in doubt. He had lost more than twenty pounds and remained confined to bed, struggling for every breath and suffering from fevers and night sweats.
In the months following his arrival, the New York County district attorney’s office hovered like a vulture, repeatedly writing to the superintendent of the facility inquiring as to the condition of their indicted defendant, and in each case the prosecutor was informed that Metesky continued to suffer the debilitative effects of the disease and remained on the tuberculosis ward of the hospital, receiving treatment. As the months passed, however, though the doctors had predicted an imminent death, Metesky’s physical condition gradually began to stabilize, and by December 1958 he had even begun to shown signs of improvement. The Matteawan staff was quick to point out, however, that his psychological condition had shown no signs of change, and soon the letters from New York County trickled to a halt. A prosecution of George Metesky, it seemed, would depend on the whims of a mental health system slow to relinquish its own.
As Metesky began his slow convalescence, word came from Albany that the state Workmen’s Compensation Board had rejected Bart O’Rourke’s bid to reopen his client’s original claim for benefits. In rejecting the appeal the board stated that no conclusive proof had been offered to show that Metesky was mentally incompetent at the time of his 1931 accident at Hell Gate, and thus there had been no excuse for the late filing of claim. Following his mandate from the Journal-American, O’Rourke filed an appeal of the decision with the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court, but on December 4, 1958, the court sided with the board and once again firmly and irrevocably denied the claim.
The life work—the vast crusade of George Metesky—had finally come to an end.
At Matteawan the Mad Bomber seemed to be anything but. By 1961 his tubercular condition had fallen into remission, and he was transferred to a psychiatric ward of the hospital. He associated with few and was, by most accounts, a model inmate who troubled neither the staff nor the inmate population. He received no treatment, medication, or therapy of any kind relating to his adjudicated mental illness, and he was, subject to the limits of his broad confinement, left to his own devices for activity and recreation. For the most part he passed his hours calmly reading books, writing in his tablet, and listening placidly to radio programs that he eagerly anticipated throughout the day.
As Metesky’s health improved, however, his anger and bitterness once again began to brew. While on the tuberculosis ward he had witnessed an inmate named Paul Simulick being repeatedly beaten by two night shift guards, and he quickly developed a deep resentment for the staff of Matteawan and the institution itself. “They used to take him out around midnight and beat him up,” wrote Metesky. “They would do this almost every night. It terrorized the other patients . . . Six months after I got off [the tuberculosis ward], Paul died. He just couldn’t take it anymore.”
By 1962, fueled by the horrors of Matteawan, Metesky was back to his old cantankerous ways. He began an angry letter-writing campaign to anyone who would listen regarding the horrid conditions at the institution and the poor treatment of its patients. Rambling dispatches began arriving at the desks of New York judges, including that of Judge Leibowitz and others, in which Metesky complained bitterly about Matteawan itself and the process by which he found himself confined there. He accused James Murray and Harry Spellman of bungling his case and stealing his money, and he claimed that they purposely engineered and contrived his insanity so as to relieve him of his assets. “I became fully convinced that I was betrayed and abandoned by my attorneys,” wrote Metesky in one letter.
Soon, like so many others on the wards of Matteawan, he began to protest his continued institutionalization at the facility, and in November 1963, just two days after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Metesky sent a confused and irate letter to New York County District Attorney Frank Hogan demanding that he
, Metesky, either be put on trial for his crimes or that all charges against him be dropped. The slow or nonexistent responses to his letters only served to further infuriate him and instigated what would become the new crusade in George Metesky’s life—a bid to personally secure his release from Matteawan.
For the next ten years Metesky dedicated nearly every waking hour to the complicated and thorny legal questions surrounding the confinement of the criminally insane. He educated himself as to the constitutional issues of his case and he meticulously researched and hand-drafted a storm of legal documents designed to gain a new hearing as to his sanity and to eventually advance his case to trial in New York and Kings County. “So many injustices have been done to me,” Metesky told a Matteawan psychiatrist. “[T]hat is why I want to go to court, to straighten them out, and to question all these people. I was never mentally ill, but I was sent to a mental institution. All this was concocted and contrived.”
In January 1964 Metesky brought a petition to the Supreme Court of New York in Dutchess County for a writ of habeas corpus. His statement alleged that his civil rights had been violated by his imprisonment at Matteawan, and it requested that he be discharged from the facility in order to face trial on the criminal charges pending against him. At a short hearing held a month later before a county judge behind the walls of Matteawan, Metesky testified, “I made this application in order to tell the Court that I am sane, that I understand the nature of my charges, and that I am able to confer with counsel.” Upon the perfunctory statement of a state psychiatrist that Metesky remained in a mentally impaired condition, unable to assist in any defense, however, the petition was summarily dismissed.
The Mad Bomber of New York Page 24