Lilly Schmidt was arrested on February 25, 1992, and later indicted on federal charges of conspiracy, bank fraud and other crimes. Two federal agents of the Department of Defense Criminal Investigative Service, Kenneth Siegler and Kenneth Connaughton, transported her back and forth from the Rikers Island detention facility to federal court for her appearances. She was in Rikers because of her pending New York state charges, and at her own request was being kept in the mental observation unit there.
In May 1992, Schmidt began to plan a daring escape from custody. She asked another Rikers inmate, Annabelle Colon, to hire two hit men to kill the two special agents while they transported her to federal court. She gave Colon detailed written and oral plans, and offered to pay the hit men $20,000. Colon later refused to help, and Schmidt turned to two other Rikers inmates, Nancy Vitello and Monica Odem. Schmidt gave them in writing specific details on her plans to escape and abscond from the country including a recommendation of three locations for the crime to be committed. She promised to pay the hitmen $100,000 each and Vitello and Odem $50,000 each.
But Vitello told U.S. Marshall John Cuff of the plan, and gave him Schmidt's written instructions. Cuff then decided to pose as “Mike,” a hit man willing to carry out the crime. Vitello told Schmidt about “Mike” and she called him—fifteen times between June 16 and June 23, 1992—and gave him instructions for the murders and her escape. She said that her friend, Patricia Scott, would hold the payoff money and money for her flight; Cuff spoke to Scott and confirmed that she was holding $500,000 of cash for Schmidt.
The murder of the agents and Schmidt's escape were set for June 24. Two deputy U.S. Marshals posing as hit men who had ostensibly just murdered Connaughton and Siegler (and were supposedly impersonating them) picked up Schmidt at Rikers and took her to the previously designated “safe house.” Schmidt was excited about her escape and showed no remorse over the agents' purported deaths. She was arrested there.
A grand jury in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York indicted her for attempted murder of federal agents and attempted escape from federal custody. She had been previously found competent to stand trial in federal court in 1990, and in a New York state court in May 1992. At that hearing, a psychiatrist testified that she was malingering and not suffering from a mental illness. The trial court in the case at hand found her competent to stand trial in November, 1992.
At the trial Schmidt raised the defense of diminished capacity. To rebut that defense, a psychiatrist testified that she diagnosed Schmidt as suffering from antisocial personality disorder, not from a severe mental illness, and that her symptoms of mental illness were faked. She observed that the defendant acted incompetently only when she knew she was being watched by doctors. A forensic clinical psychologist, who had interviewed Schmidt eight times, concluded that she had a “personality disorder with anti-social, narcissistic and paranoid features” and agreed with the first doctor that Schmidt was malingering and not suffering from mental illness. Also introduced into evidence was a letter she wrote to her boyfriend in which she told him of her intention to fake incompetence. One witness for the defendant testified that Schmidt believed that she was related to royalty. Another witness, a forensic psychiatrist, testified regarding his treatment of her over a six-month period and explained that it as his “guess” that she had a psychiatric problem. On March 5, 1993, the jury returned a verdict of guilty on all counts.
Before sentencing, additional psychiatric examinations were ordered. At subsequent hearings to determine her competency, three doctors testified that Schmidt suffered only from a personality disorder or a mild mood disorder. One doctor—the only one who considered her incompetent—testified that he believed she suffered from a schizoaffective disorder; another doctor was of the opinion that she suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. The district court determined again that Schmidt was competent at the time of the trial and was now competent to be sentenced. The court imposed a 30-year sentence.
Schmidt raised numerous issues on appeal, among them the contention that the government's sting operation that led to her arrest violated principles of fundamental fairness and therefore denied her the Fifth Amendment guarantee of due process. She argued that due to her mental illness and presence in the mental observation unit where she proposed her plan, the government should not have undertaken its elaborate operation.
Held: Affirmed. The Court noted that the due process guarantee would be violated when the government action is “fundamentally unfair” or “shocking to our traditional sense of justice” or “so outrageous” that “common notions of fairness and decency would be offended” if it led to a conviction of the accused. In finding generally that the government acted properly in the case at hand, it cited the facts that the plan originated with Schmidt, and she readily agreed to hire the agents posing as hit men. Said the Court, “When police officers do no more than facilitate a criminal enterprise started by another, due process principles are not violated.”
More specifically as to the fact that the operation was taken against a woman who had at least a colorable claim of mental “illness” and was, at the time, in the mental observation unit at Rikers, the Court said it still didn't make the government's conduct so outrageous that it deprived the defendant of due process. The Court cited the facts that her psychiatric unit confinement was at her own request; that her letter to her boyfriend suggested malingering, and the government saw the letter; and that the government also knew a court had found her competent to stand trial in May 1992, with a psychiatrist at that hearing testifying that she was malingering.
Every year, plots are foiled and calamities averted because the potential dangers of the ill are not dismissed
Editor's note: Michael Young, the New York attorney who represented the plaintiff in her appeal, has informed The Echo that his client has petitioned for a writ of certiorari to the United States Supreme Court.
 | Michael Welner, M.D. Chairman The Forensic Panel |
Dr. Welner comments: Patients on psychiatric units will say the strangest things—and often, to the wrong person. The notion of inmates on forensic wards being more fearsome than those in jails quickly fades away to staff involved in their treatment. Threats of harm are overlooked and dismissed without even a thought. That the ward is locked, with correction officers nearby and escape impossible, also fosters a sense of security that is sometimes almost, well, human. The committed, often pajama clad, participating in activities that offer only the most limited of social or intellectual demands, are pitiable figures; a sophisticated and creative mind may yet be well camouflaged.
Are the sick stupid? Or merely quite misguided? We used to laugh when the Secret Service showed up because an inmate had sent a profanity-laced threatening letter to the White House. I recalled thinking, “Him—a threat? “You gotta be kidding.” And then one day in the dayroom, as the patients slumbered around the television, one of the more alert viewers correctly recognized the patient in room 44 as the man pictured on America's Most Wanted!
On the surface, there is a certain pathos about running a sting operation on a psychiatric inpatient. But every year, plots are foiled and calamities averted because the potential dangers of the ill are not dismissed. The mentally ill are far less likely victimizers than victims but tragedies still happen all too frequently because dramatic pronouncements and threats are dismissed as the ravings of a madman.
