Angry and undeterred, Metesky immediately drew and filed a carefully handwritten appeal of the dismissal with an accompanying brief to the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court, alleging that he was denied a hearing in the true sense of the word since he was not permitted to cross-examine the psychiatrist who testified against him. Two years later, a five-judge panel of the Appellate Court unanimously agreed. The dismissal of Metesky’s habeas corpus petition was reversed and the matter was sent back to the county court for a further hearing as to his competency to stand trial.
On December 15, 1966, Metesky, now represented by an attorney familiar with the perilous landscape of Matteawan, was provided his long-awaited hearing in a Poughkeepsie, New York, courtroom. In an often contentious examination, several Matteawan psychiatrists testified that their patient had exhibited no perceptible psychological improvement since 1957, when he was originally committed to the institution. When asked to describe some of the symptoms still displayed by Metesky, one of the witnesses stated, “Inappropriate emotional reaction, expressed delusional ideas. Illogical thinking. Misrepresentation of real occurrences. Impaired judgment and lack of insight. I may add, grandiosity, autistic thinking. Suspiciousness. Distrust.” When another psychiatrist was asked whether Metesky appreciated the possibility of his losing should he be released from the hospital and advanced to trial, he informed the court, “He doesn’t pay much attention to the charges. That’s [not] what’s important. The importance is to bring out to this Court injustices, and that’s what I feel would also prevent him from really defending himself and discussing with his counsel.” According to the Matteawan psychiatrists, Metesky was still looking for a forum to expose his old nemesis, Con Ed.
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.
On June 19, 1972, Engel appeared before Justice Beatrice Judge in a closed Brooklyn courtroom accompanied by a newly invigorated and vibrant-looking George Metesky. In an eloquent appeal designed to free his client from the dismal confines of Matteawan, Engel produced evidence of a competent and intelligent man, plainly capable of conferring with his lawyer and assisting in his defense. Though considerate of the attorney’s presentation, the counter-testimony of Matteawan’s psychiatrists as to their daily observations of Metesky’s behavior was, in the end, overwhelmingly persuasive. Like so many other jurists in her position, Justice Judge once again concluded that Metesky was, indeed, a dangerous incapacitated person, and she recommitted him to the custody of the Department of Correction. Visibly disappointed by the ruling, Metesky cast his eyes downward as he was led out of the courtroom to the awaiting van bound again for Matteawan.
Two weeks later, Engel filed a motion with the court seeking the jury trial that had been promised by the groundbreaking federal court decision in his client’s favor. In the legal brief filed with the motion, Engel eloquently wrote, “The defendant, George P. Metesky, who is presumed innocent under our laws although under indictment, has languished in a correctional institution for the mentally insane for the past 15½ years and his constitutional rights should be treated with extreme caution.” The Kings County judge agreed. A jury trial on the issue of whether George Metesky was dangerous as defined by the law was finally ordered, and on January 25, 1973, Metesky was once again transported to Kings County Hospital for further proceedings.
He would never return to Matteawan State Hospital.
On May 29, 1973, the United States Supreme Court unanimously and summarily affirmed the decision of the Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York in favor of George Metesky and his fellow plaintiffs. Adopting the lower court’s opinion in its entirety, the Supreme Court had confirmed that without an adjudication of “dangerousness” by a jury of his peers, an individual indicted on a felony charge but untried because of incompetence to stand trial may not be held in a mental hospital for the criminally insane. Though noticed by few at the time, the decision would have far-reaching and broad application throughout the country, and would affect nearly five hundred patients in the New York penal system and countless others in various states. In hailing the court’s decision, the state commissioner of mental hygiene, Alan D. Miller, said, “The emphasis should be on programs that treat people in treatment-oriented hospitals, and not in treatment-correctional facilities.”
Across New York and beyond, individuals accused of crimes who had been adjudged too mentally ill to stand trial and thus committed to mental facilities managed by state correctional agencies found themselves transferred to kinder and gentler civil institutions and were suddenly offered hearings on their level of dangerousness—the first step on the journey to freedom.
The long road traveled by George Metesky had led him to the highest court in the land, and the injustices that he had so long and bitterly railed against had been addressed. For all the wrongs he had committed and the chaos he had wrought, the Mad Bomber had finally made a difference.
It was clear by now that seventy-year-old George Metesky would never be declared dangerous by a New York jury. Recognizing this reality, the Kings County district attorney stipulated with Irving Engel that the defendant may be moved to Creedmore State Hospital in Queens Village, New York, a civil institution operated by the Department of Mental Hygiene. Though, as stated by the federal courts, the next step in the process would have been a hearing on the thorny question of competence and capacity, such a hearing would, ironically, not be provided to Metesky. In the end, the law that he had fought so hard to change would never be applied to him. He wouldn’t need it.
In 1972, as part of a sweeping set of reforms, the New York State Legislature enacted a provision of the penal statutes mandating that no untried criminally insane person could be held in an institution for a period exceeding two-thirds of the maximum term for the highest class felony charged in the original indictment. In the case of George Metesky the highest class of felony charged was attempted murder in the first degree—an offense that carried a maximum of twenty-five years. The two-thirds calculation imposed by the new law reduced Metesky’s potential sentence to sixteen years and eight months—a term that would expire on September 21, 1973. In finding that the new statute had specific applicability to Metesky’s case, Judge Hyman Barshay of the New York Supreme Court in Kings County wrote, “No longer is the key ‘thrown away’ when a mentally ill person is confined by an order of commitment which in the past has resulted in . . . [a] life [term] . . .”
On December 10, 1973, George Metesky stood before a New York judge for the final time, in a highly publicized, media-covered bid to gain his freedom. Notwithstanding the expiration of his sentence as determined by the new law, it had taken several months for the multiple charges in both counties to reach dismissal, but now, after nearly seventeen years, his long legal road appeared to be at an end.
“Sixteen years ago, you caused a great deal of turmoil in this city,” began Judge Joseph Martinis.
The silver-haired Metesky silently bowed his head tensely, clutching a gray fedora close to his breast. His hopes had been dashed by many judges, and though his lawyer had told him that his long fight was finally over, a
part of him could not help but worry.
“I remember it well,” the judge continued. “Many of us had sleepless nights because of the terror you were causing. I expect there’ll be no repetition.”
Metesky looked up and gave his word.
Several days later he boarded a Greyhound bus bound for Waterbury, Connecticut. Sitting alone, he peered through the rain-streaked window, struggling to recall landmarks that he had passed so many times in earlier days. As the bus rumbled toward the city of his birth, the familiar sights of home began to fill his senses and he sighed with whimsical thoughts of what might have been. Perhaps, he wondered, things would have been better had he just let matters pass.
By the time he knocked on the door of his boyhood home, darkness had fallen on the sullen streets of Waterbury. The porch light switched on, and there in the yellow luminescence stood Mae, now frail and ailing. Anna had passed away many years earlier, and he was eager to care for his only sister. She smiled weakly and said simply, “Hello George.”
He hoisted his travel bag over the threshold and surveyed the familiar surroundings with eager and longing eyes. As the porch light flickered off George Metesky warily removed his overcoat. Beneath was a double breasted suit—neatly buttoned.
That night, as long-suffering New Yorkers locked their doors before turning in, they nervously secured the latch and checked on the children one last time for good measure.
The Mad Bomber of New York Page 25