United States v. Tesfa

• Decision Date: 30 September 1975
• Docket Number: Crim. No. 72-425.
• Citation: 404 F. Supp. 1259
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America v. Lulseged TESFA a/k/a H. Teffa.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Pennsylvania

404 F. Supp. 1259

UNITED STATES of America v. Lulseged TESFA a/k/a H. Teffa.

Crim. No. 72-425.

United States District Court, E. D. Pennsylvania.

September 30, 1975.

J. Clayton Undercofler, III, First Asst. U. S. Atty., Philadelphia, Pa., for United States.

Alan M. Lerner, Philadelphia, Pa., for Tesfa.

OPINION

DITTER, District Judge.

The defendant was convicted of air piracy despite his contention that at the time of the offense he lacked the mental capacity to conform his conduct to the requirements of law. Defendant's motions for judgment of acquittal or a new trial were denied and sentence imposed. He has appealed, and I am filing this opinion in order to inform the Court of Appeals of my reasons for refusing his motions.

In support of his motions, defendant, Lulseged Tesfa, a native of Ethiopia, raised three contentions:

(1) he was denied due process because the court improperly found that he was competent to stand trial

(2) the manner and form of the voir dire constituted an abuse of the trial court's discretion and denied defendant a fair trial before an impartial jury; and (3) the court erred in finding an expert witness for the Government qualified to testify as to defendant's sanity, and in permitting him so to testify.

I. FACTUAL BACKGROUND

The facts giving rise to this criminal prosecution are set forth at length in United States v. Green, 373 F.Supp. 149, 150-51 (E.D.Pa.), aff'd., 505 F.2d 731 (3d Cir. 1974). Suffice it to say for present purposes that defendant and another man, Michael Stanley Green, boarded National Airlines Flight 496 on July 12, 1972, in Philadelphia, and seized the airliner by force as it neared Kennedy Airport in New York City. After demanding $600,000. ransom, the two skyjackers ordered the crew to fly the airplane back to Philadelphia. Although the plane's captain escaped after landing, the rest of the crew, the passengers, and skyjackers remained inside the aircraft on a runway at Philadelphia International Airport until the early hours of July 13, when, using the remaining members of the crew as human shields, Tesfa and Green transferred to a second aircraft in which $500,000. and three parachutes had been placed. Thereafter, upon Tesfa's instructions the second airplane took off and headed south. As they approached the Gulf of Mexico, the skyjackers ordered the copilot, who was in command of the airplane, to fly to Jamaica. Seizing an opportunity when Tesfa momentarily left the cockpit, the copilot slammed the door shut and initiated maneuvers which alternately threw the skyjackers against the overhead and floor of the cabin. He ultimately set the airplane down on a small landing field in Texas, and together with the flight engineer escaped through a cockpit window. Four stewardesses remained inside the aircraft with Tesfa and Green until late on the afternoon of July 13 when the skyjackers surrendered to the F.B.I. Green was tried separately and convicted by a jury of air piracy. I denied his post-trial motions, and the Court of Appeals affirmed. See United States v. Green, supra.

II. COMPETENCE OF THE DÉFENDANT TO STAND TRIAL

Defendant's contention that this court improperly found him competent to stand trial — and consequently deprived him of due process — for convenience may be broken down into three sub-arguments. First, he asserts that he was not accorded a fully adversary hearing on the issue of his competency consonant with procedural due process. Second, he contends that I was biased and prejudiced, and conducted myself as "both presenter of evidence and trier of facts with respect to Defendant's competency." Finally, he argues that the evidence established that he was incompetent to stand trial and that my failure to make such a finding constituted a denial of substantive due process.

The defendant's competency was, from the outset, a primary concern of this court. Only two months after the skyjacking, and upon the motion of the Government,¹ I ordered that Tesfa be examined at the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri, where he was then confined, for the purpose of determining his mental competency to stand trial and to understand the proceedings against him. The result of that examination was a report of the Springfield Psychiatric Staff, dated October 31, 1972, and signed by Dr. Robert Jack Eardley, the Deputy Coordinator for Mental Health, in which he and three other physicians found that the defendant was not schizophrenic² but was malingering. The staff concluded he was competent, and on December 18, 1972, Dr. H. B. Fain, the Acting Chief of Psychiatric Services at Springfield, ordered that Tesfa be discharged from the medical center and returned to this court for trial.

On February 1-2, 1973, I conducted a hearing to determine the defendant's competency. Dr. Eardley testified that in his opinion, defendant was competent. Defense counsel produced four witnesses — Dr. J. Stephen Goldberg, a general practitioner and Chief Medical Officer at the Federal Reformatory at Petersburg, Virginia, to which Tesfa had been transferred from Springfield; Dr. John Hugh Wallace, a psychologist at the Petersburg facility; Dr. Robert J. Murney, a consultant at Springfield; and Dr. Robert L. Sadoff, a privately-retained psychiatrist practicing in the Philadelphia area — all of whom testified that defendant was incompetent to stand trial. At the conclusion of the hearing, and relying largely on the comparatively long period of time Dr. Eardley and the other members of the psychiatric staff at Springfield had had to observe and examine the defendant, as contrasted with the much shorter times the other psychiatrists and psychologists had spent with him, I found him competent.

On May 14, 1973, on the basis of new information brought to my attention by the Government, another competency hearing was held. At that proceeding three expert witnesses unanimously agreed that defendant was not competent to stand trial. Dr. Arthur David Boxer, a psychiatrist on the staff of the Forensic and Psychiatric Unit at Holmesburg Prison, opined that Tesfa was schizophrenic. Albert Levitt, the chief psychologist for the Psychiatric Division for the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County, stated that he believed that defendant was suffering not from schizophrenia, but rather from a dissociative reaction stemming from his incarceration. Dr. Francis Hoffman, a psychiatrist and the director of the Psychiatric Unit for the Philadelphia Common Pleas Court, concurred in Mr. Levitt's conclusion. Accordingly, on May 18, 1973, I adjudged the defendant to be incompetent to stand trial, and directed that he be sent back to the Springfield Medical Center.

Upon Tesfa's return to Springfield, Dr. Eardley assigned Dr. Emasue Snow, a staff psychiatrist, to be his treating physician. In December, 1973, the psychiatric staff issued a report signed by Dr. Snow diagnosing defendant's condition as social maladjustment and concluding that he was competent to stand trial.

Prior to defendant's trial, another competency hearing commenced on October 15, 1974. Dr. Eardley, who had left Springfield the previous July to become the Regional Administrator for the North Central Region of the Bureau of Prisons, stated that as of the time he last saw Tesfa, he believed him to be competent to stand trial. Dr. Emasue Snow also testified that it was her opinion the defendant was competent. At the conclusion of Dr. Snow's testimony, I found that there was sufficient evidence to conclude that the defendant was competent as of May, 1974. Since more than five months had elapsed since then, however, I directed Dr. Eardley, pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 4244, to re-examine the defendant for the purpose of determining his competency at the present time. Dr. Eardley requested that Dr. David Taub, a psychologist, also be directed to examine Tesfa, a request which I granted.

The following day, after Drs. Eardley and Taub had examined the defendant for approximately two hours, a new competency proceeding — to ascertain defendant's competency as of that date — began. Both men opined that Tesfa was competent to stand trial. Dr. Taub also stated that in his opinion, the pressure and tension of the trial would cause defendant's mental condition to deteriorate "no more than for any ordinary person." At this hearing I also directed certain questions to the defendant and asked his attorney's opinion as to Tesfa's competency. Counsel responded that he had experienced no difficulty over the last month or so in communicating with the defendant, explaining things to him, and obtaining information from him. At that juncture, I commented upon the evidence presented and concluded that the defendant was "able to understand the proceedings against him rationally and factually . . . able to assist in his own defense and . . . competent to stand trial."³

On October 29, 1974, upon completion of the jury selection process, certain inappropriate behavior on the part of the defendant both in and out of court⁴ prompted me to hold yet another inquiry on the issue of his competency to proceed. At this proceeding defendant called to the witness stand Dr. Gerald Cooke, the chief psychologist at Norristown State Hospital for the previous year and a half. Dr. Cooke had been privately retained by the defense as an expert consultant. He stated that he believed that defendant was suffering from a hysterical dissociative reaction, that his behavior was neither conscious nor voluntary, and that he was incompetent to stand trial.

Dr. Eardley, who had at the Court's direction returned to Philadelphia for the purpose of examining the defendant, testified that in his opinion Tesfa's behavior was both conscious and voluntary, and that he remained competent. On October 30, Lois Briggs, a consulting psychologist at Springfield who had first interviewed the defendant in August, 1973, and who had together with Dr. Eardley, examined him...