Grand Old Police Blotter: Selling Dr. Sell

Today's New York Times op-ed page had a strange piece about Charles Sell, a St. Louis dentist who was indicted on charges of mail and Medicaid fraud and conspiracy to commit murder. The article focuses on the issue that Sell (allegedly) is too psychotic to assist in his own defense, but refuses to take anti-psychotic medication and can't be forced to stand trial. Sell's case was argued before the U.S. Supreme Court today.

The author of the article, a American Enterprise Institute writer named Sally Satel, argues that the government should be allowed to medicate mentally ill criminal defendants like Sell, because they aren't mentally competent to make decisions about their own health.

The interesting part of the article is its omission and/or spin on two important facts. The first missing fact is that Sell -- or his friends -- has friends in high places. As Joe Conason reported in 2001, Sell was a member and supporter of the racist Council of Conservative Citizens. And his advocates included no less a personage than John Ashcroft, who was then a Senator (and Southern Partisan fan):

While serving as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mr. Ashcroft made several inquiries to the Justice Department on behalf of the dentist, according to Gordon Baum, head of the Council of Conservative Citizens, a militant white racialist group headquartered in Missouri, and the Post-Dispatch. As recently as last September, while he campaigned for re-election to the Senate, Mr. Ashcroft met personally with a prominent C.C.C. member named Thomas Bugel to discuss how he could assist Dr. Sell.

Satel also fails to mention that Sell's alleged paranoia is rabid anti-Clinton hatred. (I suppose she didn't want to risk exposing her AEI fellows to involuntary psychiatric treatment.)

Those omissions might be explained on the basis that Satel was only interested in the medical/legal issue, and not Sell's political beliefs or conservative backers. But the piece also contains a more significant spin on the facts. Satel insinuates that Sell is a non-violent man. She contrasts Sell with a defendant charged with two murders, and says:

The difference here is that Mr. Sell did not kill anyone, and his lawyers claim that the government's interest in prosecuting him for a lesser, nonviolent offense does not outweigh his right to refuse medication.

After characterizing Sell as non-violent, Satel says that "likely as a result of paranoia, he conspired to kill a witness and a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent, prosecutors say."

But Joe Conason tells a different story. He reports that Sell and his wife were charged with plotting to murder an F.B.I. agent and the main witness against him:

That would be Dr. Charles T. Sell, a St. Louis dentist indicted by the Justice Department on charges that include conspiracy to murder an F.B.I. agent and a federal witness.

The strange case of Dr. Sell�imprisoned for much of the past three years in the psychiatric ward of the federal prison in Springfield, Mo.�began in May 1997, when he was arrested in his office by federal agents on charges of defrauding Medicaid. A year later, the government charged the dentist and his wife, Mary Sell, with plotting to kill the F.B.I. agent who arrested him, as well as a former employee who was the chief witness against him. The evidence includes taped conversations described as �incriminating� by a Louis Post-Dispatch reporter who listened to them, and statements by a couple who say the Sells tried to hire them to carry out the murders.

The fact that Sell and his wife allegedly worked in tandem to hire the killer, and both were charged with the crime of conspiracy to commit murder, undercuts the theory that Sell was a "nonviolent" man whose efforts to kill the people who put in him in jail was a result of the onset of post-incarceration delusional thought. (He wasn't plotting to kill Jodie Foster or Abe Lincoln, after all.) The charge of criminal conspiracy to commit murder against Sell would also suggest that it wasn't "prosecutors" who are "say[ing]" that Sell was delusional when he ordered the hit.

So why is a conversative author, in an ostensibly pro-law and order column, trying to downplay the alleged crimes and culpability of an anti-government racist? I can't recall the last time anyone on the right thought mental illness was anything but left-wing dodge to avoid responsibility.