Note from the past 3 weeks of Jury Duty, (June-July 2015) - "'He should be alive: Flawed system fails mentally ill killer and his young victim'"
In 2015 I served on a jury for a murder/insanity trial. After the trial ended, I wrote up my impressions and shared them with a limited number of friends. Given the nature of the trial and the real issues it raised, I have decided to make those comments public. I have also decided not to edit the text, even where there are minor typos or errors in the timeline since it represents my thinking at the time, and the errors suggest the stress that the jury was under during this trial.
BRBIII
February 2017
___________________________________________________
Written
in part because to write this is a way of freeing my mind from my need
to consciously remember it all. You do not need to feel obligated to
read it.
 |
| Anthony Mondenado |
***
Here is what happened.
Or at least what was given to us a jurors. Unfortunately, the only
people who know what happened in those few seconds to a minute are
Anthony and AM. So much of the description of what happened between
2:30am and 3:30am are only from AM’s conversations with the
psychiatrists and his confession, which was written out by the Detective
“for clarity and logical sense” and videotaped after being questioned
without a lawyer from 4:30am until 6pm.
***
At the age
of 17 Alejandro Morales [AM] locked himself in the bathroom saying that
there were demons trying to get him. His mother has to call EMS and
that is described as perhaps his first psychotic break. He was
diagnosed then as a paranoid schizophrenic with an anti-social disorder.
That diagnosis was consistent through the years and with numerous Drs.
His mother would hide the knives in the apartment because she once
awoke to find him standing over the beds of his brothers holding a knife
to protect them from the demons.
On at least two
previous occasions, AM committed unprovoked attacks on a bus rider and
on a subway rider. He was restrained and held by other customers both
times. Both times, he was on his way to a psychiatric appointment. In
the episode on the bus, he said that the victim spit on him, but not the
kind of spit that is there when you touch it, but the kind that comes
from angles. A consistent theme is that people are spitting on him from
angles, but not the kind of spit you can see when you touch it. Rain
is not rain but spit. He wrote to one Dr. that “when it rains, things
get interesting. Run for cover.” The victim on the bus was knocked
unconscious before AM could be restrained.
In the
2003 subway episode, AM said that a rider, who was apparently simply
sitting and reading the newspaper, was “trying to intimidate me with his
testicles” and so AM smashed him over the head with a bottle, requiring
40 stitches. The victim said that he “hoped that AM would get the help
he obviously needs” and AM was convicted of assault and sent to Attica
for 5 years. At Attica he was constantly moved back and forth from the
general population to the psych ward and solitary.
In
2009 he was released on probation and into a half-away house and a drug
treatment program. He had, according to the Drs. tried early on to
self-medicate using marijuana, and that it had probably helped at first
in the time before his first psychotic break, but that as his condition
worsened, it actually became a trigger for his psychotic delusions.
Throughout the records, the various Drs note that AM has no insight into
his being ill, that he constantly goes off his meds and even when he is
on them, does not acknowledge or understand that he has a problem.
Through
Serendipity – really, that’s the real name of his half-way house – he
gets psychological treatment and supervision, but constantly goes on and
off his medication. He is hospitalized or sent to ERs for medication
several times between May and November 2009. He is long been taking two
anti-psychotic medications, Halenol and Abilify, but in November, his
dosage is increased and he is put on a third anti-psychotic drug. All
told at this point he is on three anti-psychotic drugs and three drugs
to deal with the side-effects of the anti-psychotic drugs. It is
unclear whether he had taken his medications before the attack, or the
correct dosage of them, etc.
Just before
Christmas, he walks away from the half-way house (he also skips two
sessions with his psychologist at Canarsie Aware). Around December
20th, he comes to his mother’s apartment in the Grant Houses in Harlem.
He tells her that he wants to be home for the holidays and she lets him
stay, trying to supervise as best she could his taking his meds though
she is at work and AM’s younger brothers are at work or often away
looking for work. Most of this time, AM stays in his room or sits
around watching the others play video games. He never actually plays
one himself. He has delusions about the characters, that there are gang
members outside the windows spitting on him from angles, voices are
talking to him and everyone is speaking to him only by rapping, that the
Bloods and the Crips are coming to get him, that the “whole universe is
trying to humiliate him” etc. But he does not tell anyone about this.
AM’s brother Aaron would later be asked by the DA “Did your brother
seem normal?” and Aaron said “My brother has never seemed normal. That’s
just who he is.”
Anthony’s favorite uncle Carlos
was also living with AM’s mother, and so Anthony, who had in fact gotten
a playstation 3 for Christmas, though this has less importance than
then press reports, wanted to go over to spend time between Xmas and new
years with Carlos, and his mother said yes. Carlos did not know that
AM had arrived.
Sadly, because they did not think
that AM was really capable of such an act as he obviously was to commit,
AM’s mother did not warn Anthony’s mother about his being in the
apartment.
On Christmas night, AM’s brother’s
Aaron and Chris take AM to the movie Sherlock Holmes. It was raining
and AM ran away twice to avoid the spit that he says is falling on him
when it rains. Aaron calms him down, though not without AM smashing him
against a car during the second chase. They go to the movie as Aaron
thinks that AM has calmed down, but in the theater, AM starts screaming
about the Bloods and the Cripps (not the thing to do there as there
might actually be some of them in the audience!) Aaron is worried for
their safety and takes AM home.
Things are mostly
fine until News Years Eve, 2009. AM has been mostly by himself and his
brothers and Anthony have been together. There is some indication of
jealousy about the attention that Anthony was receiving, but nothing
really discussed by either the people or the defense.
Anthony is
suppose to return home for New Years Eve with his mother, but he calls
her to ask if he can stay until Sunday because his is having a good time
and school starts Monday. His mother still has no knowledge of AM
being there. Anthony is also spending time at his Grandfather’s nearby
apartment.
On the Afternoon of December 31st, AM
has an appointment with his psychologist at Canarsie Aware in Brooklyn.
He has skipped or failed to appear at the last two, so Aaron goes with
him. As he describes his present condition to the psychologist, she
immediately goes to her boss and summons the EMS and NYPD to have him
taken to Woodhull hospital because he is “acutely psychotic” and “a
clear danger to himself and others” at that time. She writes to the
Woodhull Drs saying this explicitly and this is 12 hours before the
murder.
At Woodhull, he is evaluated by the ER
psychiatrist who finds that he is acutely psychotic, but at this point
AM is denying having said anything to the Canarsie psychologist. The
Woodhull ER Dr. goes to Aaron and asks him if he thinks AM is OK to go
home. Aaron responds “I don’t know. You tell me. You’re the Dr.” The
Woodhull DR. then writes prescriptions for two of AMs anti-psychotic
drugs and releases him to his younger (and much smaller, I might add)
brother.
Aaron and AM return to the Grant House
apartment. AM keeps to himself (says later that he hangs a shirt over
the door so that he can know if someone is trying to come into the room.
Continues to have auditory, visual, and tactile hallucinations.
When
the ball drops, Carlos and AM’s mother Antonia go to bed. AM is by
this point in the living room watching his brothers, some of their
friends, and Anthony play video games. Says later that they are walking
all over him and humiliating him and spitting on him. Characters in
the video game turn and speak to him. Everyone only speaks to him in
rhymes. He is listening to music, on his head phones, but he says that
he does not know where the music is coming from. At other times, he
will be angry at his brothers or his mother about being mean to him, and
then switch almost immediately to saying that they were always nice to
him. He says at one point during the interrogation that his mother had
been sawed in half – and in fact, he had been, too – the night before
night by the Crips, but a moment later asks if she has been able to go
get him a burger from McDonalds. Then saying that Carlos rapes his
mother, but that Carlos was nice to her and never aggressive or mean to
AM.
AM goes back to his room. Anthony’s
grandfather goes home at some point. Complains later that he goes
outside with his brothers to smoke but that they will not share their
pot with him (they only smoke outside because Mom would get mad about
pot in the apartment) and so he goes out to buy some himself, but then
says he is outside smoking with them and gets mad at them because they
still will not share, though he has just said that he had purchased
some. (Family says that he had no money of his own.) He is angry
particularly at Aaron’s friend “J.V.” and thinks about stabbing him, but
doesn’t because Aaron would be mad at him. He goes back to his room.
Aaron and everyone else think that he has gone to bed.
At
about 2am, Aaron takes Anthony to bed, telling him to get to sleep but
leaving him playing on a gameboy. Aaron, Chris and a couple of friends
decide to go to the local 24 hour burger place to get some food. They
leave sometime between 2 and 2:30am. At 3:30am, as they are leaving,
Chris gets a call from Carlos, drops the food on the ground and without
speaking to Aaron, begins to run home. Aaron follows him.
After
they leave, AM says that he gets up to go deal with JV, maybe stab him,
but finds everyone gone. He says that he calms down and goes out to
smoke pot in the hallway. He says he takes a knife to protect himself
from the people who want to get into the apartment. At various times he
will say that he was attacked by either a white male or a black male,
either before or after the stabbing of Anthony.
AM
says that he smoked, threw the rest of the pot down the “incinerator”
and went back inside to sit in the living room. He said that he was
“just chilling listening to music” and "trying to get an angle" when the
murder unfolds. He told various accounts, though in general the story
was the same in broad outline. He was sitting in the living room.
Anthony, who seemed larger and stronger than he was, went by at
superhuman speed and while sexually assaulting AM. AM had the knife
that he had taken into the hallway. He slashed and stabbed at Anthony
to protect himself from Anthony, or so he thought. Later he will say
that “Xavier Gilmore” was with him at the time. There were 10 wounds,
mostly defensive, but one through the arm and one in the chest that was
the fatal one. Anthony got free and ran to knock on Carlos’ door saying
“Uncle, Uncle. I’ve been stabbed!” or “Alex stabbed me!” and he
collapses in the doorway. AM’s mother says she hears the front door
slam and Carlos tries to give first aid while she calls 911. They are
nearby and are there within four minutes but by then it is too late.
Anthony is taken to the hospital and pronounced dead around 4:20am.
AM,
saying that he is afraid that Carlos will be mad, runs up the stairs to
the 17th floor from the apartment on the 6th floor. Sometime during
this time he is suppose to have disposed of the knife down the
compactor. The NYPD finds a knife in the compactor that is consistent
with the kitchen knife that is thought to have been used to kill
Anthony, but extensive testing revealed no fingerprints, blood, or human
DNA on the knife. Six other knives were found, some on the scaffolding
below their 6th floor apartment, and two in the kitchen sink, but none
of these were ever tested for blood or fingerprints. They are very
generic kitchen knives that one might buy anywhere. AM was shown the
knife during his confession and he identified it as the weapon, and that
is what the cops went with. They did no analysis of the living room
for blood, as they only examined the blood found on AM’s clothes and in
the hallway and floor of the apartment leading to Carlos and Antonia’s
bedroom. AM’s pants had the blood of Anthony and one other unidentified
male, but no blood from AM.
So, AM leaves the
apartment without his shoes (which are by the couch in the living room)
or coat. It is snowing outside. He says he goes up to the 17th floor
either to visit a friend or to buy shoes from a crackhead for $10. The
NYPD note that he had no money or weapon on him when he is arrested in
the next few minutes.
After going up to the 17th
floor, he goes back down the stairs to the 7th to see if he is in
trouble. He believes that he has hurt Anthony, but does not think that
he has really hurt him. “I thought I got him in the side” he said to one
of the psychiatrists.
He calls the elevator to the 7th floor and gets in.
In
the elevator are cameras operated by the NYPD Viper squad. The tape
shows the door open on 7, then close, then open again. AM gets in
pushes the button and fiddles with his hands. He does this three or
four times on the way down. The Viper camera operator has been talking
to the patrol cops as the 911 call has already been relayed to them.
The Viper camera operator follows AM’s movements for the next few
minutes. He is seen walking out of the building and down a pathway in
the snow as two NYPD run up, one with his gun drawn. He puts his hands
up and says that a white guy (or a bunch or white guys) had just tried
to rob him and he punched him in the nose and that is why there was
blood on his pants but they took his shoes. Four more NYPD run up and
they begin to walk him back to the building. At this point, his brother
Chris runs to him and gets right in his face, something that surprised
many on the jury that the cops let him get so close to someone that they
had arrested less than 45 seconds before. Chris yells “Alex, what did
you do?!” or “Why did you do that” and AM responds calmly “Don’t worry,
he’ll [or it’ll] be alright” and is taken to the precinct. Aaron and
the mother go to the precinct while Chris and Carlos go to the hospital.
There is an older sister who was not living there with them. She and
their mother were in court most days.
The police
photograph AM, who has no injuries to his hands or body, and take his
clothes. They begin to question him and question him from about 4:30am
until the confession at 6pm. He is immediately then taken to Bellevue
where he is found to be acutely psychotic at the time.
The
psychiatrists will note that it is rare that you have detailed records
from the 24 hours before, during, and after an acutely psychotic episode
that results in a murder or assault.
AM can not
be arraigned for several days until he is stabilized and then he is
returned immediately to Bellevue after his hearing. On Jan. 6th Dr.
Goldsmith sees him as he will again on the 13th and 25th. He reported
being taken aback by the broad range of symptoms that AM displayed
(Goldsmith was head of psychiatry at Kirby State Hospital on Wards
Island). That on the range of paranoid schizophrenia, AM was an extreme
outlier. In fact, every doctor back to 2003 said this, except the
Woodhull ER doctor, unfortunately.
For the next 5
years, AM moves back and forth between Kirby, Bellevue, and Rikers. He
is committed twelve times. During Sandy, he was in Bellevue, which
flooded and had to be evacuated. Most of those on his ward were sent to
other hospitals. He and a few others were sent to a special secure
ward at Kirby. He is never really stable enough to stand trial until
there is an order to compel him to take his medication. Once that
happened, the DA sent their psychiatrist, Hershberger, to examine AM in
October 2014. Hershberger does not dispute Goldsmith’s view that AM
“lacked substantial capacity to understand the nature and consequences
of his actions” when he attacked Anthony. In fact, several jurors noted
that over the course of five years, the DA had not been able to find
any psychiatrist to dispute that finding and that their own psychiatrist
had testified for the defense. Next month, we were told, he would be
testifying for the prosecution against an insanity claim. He has already
testified for the DA two or three other times this year. But this
time, he felt that he could not go along with the DA’s view.
The
key pieces of evidence for the jury were the DNA on AM’s pants and the
testimony of the two expert psychiatric witnesses, especially
Hershberger. He also said that in all of his years of experience, he
had rarely met someone as profoundly disturbed as AM. During their
session, AM was medicated and yet obviously “acutely psychotic” and that
several times Hershberger felt in danger. In his opinion, AM would
never get better, only worse.
Sloppy
police work, and nothing to do with the efforts of the DA, undermined
the murder in the second degree charge. There was just no evidence as
to his intent to kill, but for Manslaughter in the 1st degree, there was
plenty.
Contrary to reports, AM did not reek,
though he did wear the same green light winter jacket every day. He
always wore sweatpants, but they did change. There were other
“incidences” during the trial, but we were not told about them.
The
playstation/video games only came up in the context of what was going
on at the time in the apartment. There was never any mention of an
argument over the video games. In fact, the crimescene photos show the
living room with the TV and gaming center turned off, and with AM’s
shoes and jacket by the couch as well as bloody footprints probably left
by a cop but again, never tested or noted in the reports later. Many
details in the press are inaccurate or incomplete. No reporters mention
Hershberger, for example.
The jury was a very
diverse set New Yawkers. They eliminated every potential juror who was
in the mental health fields. Mostly middle to upper-middle class, with
at least a BA or BFA and about 1/3 of these with a MA or PhD. About 1/4
working class. So no really rich or really poor people. A complete
mix of ethnicity, but all but one has lived in the city more than 5
years. I was juror Seven, though I was the eleventh selected after
about 150 had been rejected before me. There were four alternates and
12 jurors. I was later told that I was selected because of my having already served on a criminal, plus also having been a legal reference librarian for many years, and now a professor of sociology, I was a ideal juror in the eyes of both sides.
The attorneys were both excellent. If I
were on trial, I would want Sosinsky, and if something this horrible
had happened to one of my loved ones, I would want a prosecutor like
Casolaro.
[After the verdict was reached and we were taken to the jury room, we were prevented from leaving because AM, once he understood that the insanity verdict would mean that he would likely remain in the psychiatric hospital for the rest of his life, he violently attacked his attorney, Sosinsky, and had to be restrained by several officers. We only found out about this later, but the uniforms of the court officers who escorted us out were noticeably disheveled. Newspapers reported the incident the next day:
