NEW YORK (AP) -- The case of a writer who is accused of pretending to be a firefighter and sexually abusing a woman on Halloween night 2005 was transferred Wednesday to another judge for hearings and trial.
1010 WINS AUDIO: Juliet Papa Reports
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.
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.
1010 WINS Boroughs & 'Burbs: Manhattan
E-Mail Story
Print Story
