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By DAN ACKMAN
On this first day of trial in Manhattan Supreme Court, Goldstein wore a black and white patterned sweater. The sweater looked like a Rorschach test. This was fitting since the trial itself is a Rorschach test, an indication of the observer's view of individual responsibility and society's responsibility for treating the mentally ill. The trial raises profound questions about personal responsibility and the government's role is caring for or controlling the mentally ill: Did Goldstein's illness leave him unable to control his urge to push Webdale, as his lawyers claim, or did he act out of anger and rage, and only later interpose his illness as an excuse, as the prosecution contends? If Goldstein is not to blame, does responsibility lie with the hospitals that kept treating and releasing him? These are the questions that 12 jurors will be asked to answer. They will not be asked to answer the question what happened because everybody knows what happened: On January 3, 1999, Kendra Webdale, an aspiring writer who had moved to the City from Buffalo, was waiting for the N Train on the 23rd Street station platform. Goldstein was there, too, pacing erratically and acting enough like a crazy man that several passengers turned away. Goldstein wound up behind Webdale and as the train raced into the station. He grabbed her and shoved her onto the track, where she was crushed to death by the 80,000-pound subway traveling at 35 miles per hour. Goldstein waited there afterwards, making no effort to escape until police arrived. He was taken to the 13th precinct, where he confessed to the crime. If convicted, Goldstein faces 25 years to life in prison. Even if judged not responsible, he is likely to be confined to a mental hospital for a indefinite term. That Goldstein was mentally ill is beyond dispute, but the state claims his illness did not cause his action. Goldstein's lawyers say he is, in the words of the statute, "not responsible by reason of mental disease or defect," and that the mental healthcare system is at fault for failing to provide him the help he needed and asked for repeatedly. That the Webdale family agrees with at least part of the defense view is another strange aspect of the case. A lawyer for the family, Jay Dankner, appeared at the courthouse during a break in the trial and announced he is suing several of the hospitals that released Goldstein in the weeks and months preceding his crime. The Webdale family's action maintains that the hospitals should have known he was dangerous, that they were negligent in releasing him and that their negligence led to Webdale's death. If, in the criminal case, Goldstein is found guilty, the hospitals would have released a murderer-- not a lunatic-- who is, under the law, responsible for his own actions. The case, which the hospitals have moved to dismiss, will soon be heard in the same court where Goldstein is on trial for murder. Assistant District Attorney William Greenbaum argued he should be held responsible despite his illness. He argued that Goldstein was filled with "rage and anger and fury," that he attacked Webdale out of frustration from being continually rejected by women, and that he acted with intent, even calculation. Goldstein's lawyer Harvey Fishbein countered that his client is insane or, in the words of the statute, "not responsible by reason of mental disease or defect." He told jurors that Goldstein was incapable of rational thought at the time of the attack. He said that for 11 years Goldstein has suffered from schizophrenia and that this chronic, incurable disease robs Goldstein of the capacity to control his actions. "He did not intend to do it, did not want to do it, did not decide to do it. He did not think," Fishbein said, promising to present expert psychiatric testimony to support this conclusion. The prosecution's case, by contrast, is built primarily on more commonplace evidence that Goldstein studied his crime. "The timing of the attack was impeccable," the prosecutor said. Neither "too soon," nor "too late," Goldstein pushed Webdale "so she [would land] just at the moment when she had no chance." Greenbaum, who will also present expert testimony, contended that Goldstein acted rationally, at least in the sense that he had a reason for his crime. The reason was his rage against women, which came to a boiling point moments before the attack when Goldstein approached another woman on the platform-- a tall blonde, named Dawn Lorenzino. Lorenzino testified on the second day of trial about her encounter with Goldstein. She saw him pacing the platform, at times walking normally, then hobbling, then turning to baby steps on his tiptoes. When he stopped and looked at her, Lorenzino asked, "What are you looking at?" and the man moved away. Goldstein then turned his attention to Webdale, asked her what time it was. She told him-- it was a little after five o'clock in the afternoon. Goldstein resumed his pacing, mumbling as he went, Lorenzino said. Goldstein ultimately stood still with his back to the wall opposite Webdale. She was three feet from the track. As the train roared into the station, Lorenzino said he pushed her with such force that she "flew" through over the track, her arms over her head "like a skydiver." "She never had a chance to scream," Lorenzino added. Webdale's sisters and mother broke down in tears. On cross examination, defense lawyers suggested that Lorenzino never actually spoke to Goldstein, and that she may have invented that part of her story to suit the prosecution theory of the case that Goldstein was motivated by rejection, and not by an uncontrollable urge caused by his schizophrenia. After the attack, Goldstein waited, not moving at all until he was confronted by Jacques Louis, the man who drove the train. Testifying at trial, Louis said Goldstein "was calm as a priest. He was really calm." Goldstein told Louis he was a mental patient and that he needed a doctor. Louis and the police officers who saw Goldstein immediately after the attack described his demeanor as flat and unaffected, which is symptomatic of his disease. The first officer at the scene, Raymond Loughlin testified that Goldstein was sitting on the platform with his legs crossed, staring straight ahead, devoid of expression. A crowd of about 20 subway riders had formed around him. Several witnesses pointed him out as the killer. A second officer, who arrived when Loughlin was placing Goldstein in handcuffs, looked down onto the track and told Loughlin, "'I see a leg.'" Before he was asked anything, Goldstein said, "I don't know the woman. I just pushed her." When Loughlin escorted Goldstein to his radio car, a crowd formed around the prisoner. People knowing what he did yelled at Goldstein, some threatening him. His expression remained fixed and constant as it did during the long night of questioning at the precinct. Alone with Loughlin at one point, Goldstein told the officer that he went to Bronx Science High School. "'That's a very good school,'" Loughlin recalled answering. Goldstein graduated from the Bronx Science, one of the leading public schools in the city, in 1987. He was at one time, his lawyer said, a "top student" and a member of the varsity tennis team. He spent a year at the State University at Stony Brook, where he performed well. At that point in 1989, he had his first psychotic break and was diagnosed a schizophrenic. For the next 11 years, Goldstein was in and out of hospitals, on and off medication, Fishbein said. In 1997, his downward slide accelerated. "Five times he walked into hospitals; five times they sent him out," always in less than a week, Fishbein said. He was given drugs, which he took sometimes and failed to take at other times. In June 1998, Emergency Medical Service workers brought him to Brookdale after Goldstein said he assaulted a woman on the subway. Fishbein said that no one can be sure whether that attack actually happened, but he said he was sure that others had. Goldstein attacked strangers repeatedly, Fishbein said. He also assaulted doctors, nurses, and social workers who tried to help him, always without warning and without provocation. Finally, in November, just weeks before he killed Webdale, Goldstein went to Jamaica Hospital in Queens. He told doctors there that "'Someone is inhabiting me and making me do things,'" Fishbein said. The hospital was about to admit him. But when he lashed out at one of their doctors, they sent him away. On December 10, Goldstein's mother pleaded with doctors at Long Island's North General Hospital to place her son in one of their supervised residences. After three weeks he was released despite the persistent warnings of psychiatrists that Goldstein was "a danger to himself and others." Fishbein said, "Two-and-a-half weeks [after his last discharge Goldstein was] on that platform with Kendra Webdale." Fishbein called Kendra Webdale "an innocent victim." But, he said, "She was not a victim of murder." Goldstein, the lawyer said, was also a victim, a promising young man "who did nothing to deserve his disease. Kendra needed protection; Andrew Goldstein needed care, which he repeatedly asked for. Neither one got what they needed." Psychiatrists at New York hospitals, all of whom asked not to be named, point to specific rules whereby the state would not pay for the treatment of severely ill mental patients whose symptoms were no longer "acute," even if the patient had nowhere to go. Goldstein's story, experts suggest, is part of a larger story: the decades-long deinstitutionalization of mental patients in New York State and around the country. According to a recent article by Michael Winerip in the New York Times Magazine, there were once 93,000 patients in New York State mental hospitals. Today, there are 6,000, and even that number is dropping. The result is a chronic shortage of inpatient care for mental patients. Goldstein time after time sought to commit himself to a hospital. He was denied repeatedly and sent away. Goldstein told the subway motorman Jaques Louis, "I'm sick, I need a doctor." Perhaps Goldstein's killing Webdale was his way of crying for help. Could that be, in some perverse way, proof that he was sane? |
