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Apr 18, 2007 9:40 pm US/Eastern
Medical Report: 'Fake Firefighter' Fit For Trial
Case To Move Forward Despite Skull Fractures, Hematomas
NEW YORK (CBS/AP) ―
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Peter Braunstein's lawyer says he is not fit to stand trial because of injuries suffered while behind bars.
CBS
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Peter Braunstein is scheduled to go to trial on a multitude of charges stemming from an attack on Oct. 31, 2005. (File photo)
CBS
A writer who is accused of pretending to be a firefighter and sexually abusing a woman on Halloween night 2005 was found medically fit Wednesday despite having suffered skull fractures, and his case was transferred to another judge for hearings and trial.
State Supreme Court Justice Thomas Farber got the case from Justice James Yates after Yates read a medical report, delivered to him Wednesday, that found defendant Peter Braunstein medically and mentally fit for trial.
Braunstein's lawyers, Robert Gottlieb and Celia Gordon, had sought delays to give their client's three skull fractures and five brain hematomas (bleeding areas) a chance to heal and for his resulting headaches to ease.
Lawyers on both sides already had agreed Braunstein was mentally fit for trial, but Yates had wanted to know whether the skull injuries had left the defendant physically unable to participate.
Prosecutors, who said jail guards reported Braunstein deliberately cracked his skull on a cell sink, had told Yates they found the headaches "suspect" and perhaps not as severe as the defendant claimed.
Farber ordered pretrial hearings to begin Thursday afternoon. He said jury selection for Braunstein's trial could start next week.
Yates, who had overseen Braunstein's case since his felony arraignment, said he would have had to wait until he finished a complex bench trial of bid-rigging charges against former executives of the world's largest insurance broker, Marsh & McLennan, before getting to Braunstein's case.
Braunstein, wearing orange jail garb, had come to court earlier in the day handcuffed to a wheelchair but walked out of the courtroom under his own steam for the first time in weeks.
Braunstein, 42, is accused of sexually abusing a 34-year-old former Women's Wear Daily co-worker in her Manhattan apartment for 13 hours starting Halloween night 2005.
The defendant wore a firefighter's outfit and set a fire in the hallway outside the woman's apartment before banging on her door, prosecutors said. He was on the run for six weeks before being captured.
Braunstein was arrested Dec. 16, 2005, on the University of Memphis campus in Tennessee. He stabbed himself in the neck several times in an apparent suicide attempt as a campus policeman approached while pointing a gun at him.
Braunstein has pleaded not guilty to arson, kidnapping, burglary, robbery, sexual abuse and assault charges.
Gottlieb, Braunstein's lawyer, says he will present trial evidence that his client was mentally ill at the time of the alleged attack on the woman and therefore should not be held criminally responsible for it.
(© 2007 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
