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“[I]t is time to chart a new course,” the state’s highest court declared, in ordering that trials that involve both an insanity defense and another be conducted as one proceeding with two phases.
The 1980 Appellate Division decision in State v. Khan prevented Robert Handy from first arguing self-defense. As a result, now-retired Superior Court Judge Joseph A. Falcone found him not guilty by reason of insanity in the 2004 killing and sentenced him indefinitely to a psychiatric facility.
Handy, a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, wanted the opportunity to also argue self-defense, contending that Arthur Cooper attacked him with a metal pipe outside their Pearl Street apartment after he turned off a fan in Cooper’s bedroom.
The state Appellate Division agreed with Handy, as did the Supreme Court.
He is now entitled to a self-defense trial, the justices found.
What’s more, they ruled, judges and jurors in the future must hear both defenses as part of a single trial.
“The error was in depriving defendant of his right to pursue that second part of the trial and instead committing him for treatment based on the insanity finding without ever affording him the chance to be acquitted of the crime based on his self-defense theory,” the justices wrote.
Handy “shall first be re-evaluated for competency,” they ruled. “If he is no longer competent, the judgment of not guilty by reason of insanity shall stand. If defendant is competent, he may elect to proceed to a trial … in which he may offer his self-defense theory.”
Police found Cooper in a pool of blood outside the apartment, the victim of a single stab wound that penetrated his heart, on Jan. 13, 2004. He was pronounced DOA at St. Joseph’s Regional Medical Center.
While police were at the scene, Handy showed up and said he stabbed his uncle in self-defense, then went to do his laundry.
The pipe he said Cooper attacked him with had “King Reveal” on it – the same as a tattoo his uncle had.
Handy had been in and out of several hospitals before the stabbing – most recently five months before, when he was admitted to St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital in Manhattan. Experts said he had “delusions about having been sexually and physically assaulted … by hundreds of individuals, including his attorney, a judge who had presided over his case, and his physicians,” the Supreme Court decision says.
Handy made a list of 40 or so people who he believed had sexually assaulted or otherwise harmed him, the decision says. At the top of the list was Cooper.
In what may seem to some an odd outcome, both the prosecutors and Handy’s defense attorney agreed that he was competent to stand trial but not competent enough to waive an insanity defense. They also agreed that both defenses – insanity and self-defense – couldn’t be tried at once.
Prosecutors argued that the insanity trial should come before the self-defense case. Handy’s attorney wanted it the other way around.
Falcone determined that Handy was fit to be tried, provided he take his medication regularly. The judge also found that Handy wasn’t competent to waive the insanity defense, and that this defense should be tried first.
Once he reached his insanity verdict, Falcone committed Handy to a secure treatment facility.
Although pleased with the outcome of the insanity hearing, Handy’s attorney appealed the sequence.
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