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."