Rape Suspect Wears Clothes Inside Out, Claims Mental Illness

The defense lawyer for Robert Williams used a sartorial defense in court yesterday. Williams, accused of raping and torturing a Columbia graduate student last April, appeared wearing his "jeans and polo shirt inside out," prompting his lawyer to say, "This is symptomatic of mental illness...The best I can do right now, given my relationship with my client, is that I’d like the court to observe my client’s shirt and jeans are both inside out." However, the judge said, "Maybe they were dirty on the other side."

Prosecutors contend that Williams, an ex-con, pushed his way into a 23-year-old journalism student's Hamilton Height apartment and committed a particularly heinous crime. During the 19 hours he held her, he tied her to a futon with coaxial cable, raped her, slit her eyelids, and poured bleach and boiling water on her body (to remove DNA evidence). He set fire to the futon, but the fire burned through the cable and she was able to escape to the super's apartment.

Prosecutors believe that Williams' refusal to speak to court-appointed doctors was, per the Times, "calculated to obstruct the prosecution." However, his defense lawyer Arnold Levine says his client is paranoid. The judge has found Williams fit to stand trial but is giving Levine more time to "submit additional evidence of a specific psychiatric disorder."

Williams was found mentally unfit to stand trial for a Queens robbery he committed right before his capture. Some Hollis residents helped capture him when he broke into one's apartment with a hammer. When they heard news that he was suspected for rape, one said, "If we had known he was a rapist, he wouldn't have made it off this block."

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By Jen Chung in News on January 3, 2008 3:37 PM

Comments [rss]

ed_Extinct

actually, animals behave better than this coward.

Snoopy

How about implanting homing devices deep within these people so they can be tracked like the animals they are?

johnieBK

Hey Everyone don't worry about this guy!

He will get 8 years and servie 5 years. So figure him being back on the street in 2013, where he will undoubtely rape again. Probably within about a week of getting out of prison.

That's when you have to worry.

ed_Extinct

publicly hang him at city hall.

freddyhere

Weird - I could have sworn news of his capture by those two kids was much more recent than 9 months ago....

Spear_Chucker

I believe the clinical term for the mental illness he is suffering from is called ThuggeryGhetto-itis. It seems many in inner-urban areas suffer from it.

Hopefully a cure will be found soon.

babyhitler

remember Nelly wearing his clothes backwards and wearing bandaids on his face even though he didn't have cuts? crazy!

Dave Hogarty

Kriss Kross wore their clothes backwards, not inside out. That would have been crazy, as his attorney argues, rather than wiggety wiggety whack.

AnonEMouse

Please save NY tax payers the money that would be wasted defending and trying this useless waste of a human: just give the poor girl's family 5 minutes with him in a locked room and they'll make sure this piece of trash never breaks into another apartment. Better yet, how about the same scenario except her family is armed with a sharp knife or scissors so this idiot can never rape another innocent woman again.

This guy is the number one reason why we should focus on making castration legal in the U.S.

eyekantspel

Maybe Uzinagaz.com can make an online video game to show the futility of trying to fight crime.

Snoopy

Come on people give the guy a break.

Ok break time is over. Kill the asshole.

JenChungsBaby

GUILTY!

Throw away the key.

TimSPC

Doesn't he know that everything is to the back with a little slack, because inside out is wiggity wiggity wack?

drewo

"This is symptomatic of mental illness... I’d like the court to observe my client’s shirt and jeans are both inside out."

He's just behind the style curve: remember Kriss Kross?