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St. Louis Post-Dispatch
September 15, 2000, Friday, FIVE STAR LIFT EDITION
NEWS, Pg. A1
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DENTIST ACCUSED OF MURDER PLOT WANTS TRIAL AFTER 3 YEARS IN JAIL;
BUT PROSECUTORS ARGUE
HE IS TOO MENTALLY ILL
Carolyn Tuft
A Town and Country dentist has been behind bars for three years -- one in solitary confinement -- even though he has never been convicted of a crime.
The dentist, Dr. Charles "Tom" Sell, stands accused of Medicaid fraud and plotting to kill an FBI agent. Sell maintains his innocence and is pleading for his day in court.
"I'm not guilty," Sell said from the St. Clair County Jail in Belleville last week in his first interview since his arrest in May 1997. He's there awaiting another mental evaluation to determine whether he's fit to stand trial -- the issue that has continually delayed his trial. "I want a trial," he said. "They don't want to give me a trial, so there is no way I can prove I'm not guilty, get out of prison and restore my dignity."
Sell says that being in jail has cost him his dental practice, $ 250,000 in equipment, his $ 250,000 Creve Coeur home and $ 200,000 in retirement funds.
He has spent most of his three years at the federal prison hospital in Springfield, Mo., where he will return to solitary confinement after he leaves the Belleville jail. The Springfield facility has had its own share of controversy. A "60 Minutes" report nine years ago alleged that the hospital's treatment of inmates caused "unnecessary death and disfigurement."
Federal authorities moved Sell to Springfield after they tagged him mentally ill. That status has kept Sell from being tried.
The government's contention that Sell suffers from a "delusional disorder" stems in large part from Sell telling a prison psychiatrist that Sell was a major in the Army Reserve and was called to active duty on April 19, 1993 - the day of the deadly fire at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas.
But a review of military records shows that Sell was activated as a major that day.
Over time, Sell's family and friends began to seek news media attention. By Dec. 27, Sell's commitment had expired, yet Sell was held anyway. On Jan. 31, Sell's lawyers filed papers seeking to have Sell released from jail. There have been no court hearings since then.
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Howard Marcus, the assistant U.S. attorney handling the charges that Sell plotted to kill the agent, would not say whether the government is ready to try Sell. "Since this is pending . . . it is not right for me to go into the specific details of the case," Marcus said.
He said he was obligated to bring up the issue of whether Sell is competent to stand trial. And Sell's federal public defender,
Lee Lawless, said it's the issue that could keep Sell from ever getting his day in court.
Sell has been fighting the government's attempt to forcibly medicate him. If a judge says the government cannot medicate Sell, the government will argue that Sell cannot be restored to competency. Sell then might be committed in a civil court proceeding and the charges dropped, Lawless said. The dentist only would be released if he shows he is not a danger to himself or others.
Yet if Sell is forcibly medicated and found competent, he may not be able to stand trial because a judge could say he could not be medicated during the trial, Lawless said.
Accused of plotting murder
FBI agents entered Sell's office in Town and Country on May 16, 1997, when he was seeing his Medicaid patients. The agents arrested him on charges of Medicaid fraud.
Sell says the charges came from a misunderstanding. He said he had refused to pull patients' front teeth when they became weak, as the insurance carriers asked. Instead he would bond them with a filling and charge for the service.
"What's wrong with that?" Sell asked.
Sell was sent to the Springfield prison hospital and labeled mentally ill. By August 1997, he made bail and returned to St. Louis. He was back in jail by January 1998 after a witness told the FBI that Sell had pointed a finger at her as if to be shooting her with a gun.
Three months later, the government charged him with plotting to kill an FBI agent after two of Sell's acquaintances provided a six-hour audio tape that authorities say implicates Sell in a murder-for-hire plot.
A judge ruled in April last year that Sell was incompetent to stand trial and committed him to Springfield for 120 days. A second 120-day commitment order was issued in August last year.
Shortly after Sell arrived at Springfield, a prison psychiatrist diagnosed him with a delusional disorder when Sell told him he was a major in the Army Reserve. He said he had been called up for active duty on April 19, 1993, to an Army burn center in Texas. He said he had gone there to help identify possible Army casualties from Waco.
Army records don't specify a reason for Sell's activation to Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio.
The psychiatrist felt Sell's account was delusional, and he asked that he be forcibly medicated. Sell has adamantly refused. Despite an order from a judge this summer, Sell won't allow the government to inject him with anti-psychotic drugs.
"They completely alter your mind," Sell said. "I won't be able to think. I will never be able to practice dentistry again."
He was sent to solitary confinement on July 21 last year, after he called a nurse by her first name. The nurse said that Sell had gotten too familiar.
For 24 hours a day, Sell said he sat in a 6-by-10-foot cell with only a bunk and a toilet. On Sept. 29, Sell appeared at a competency hearing to decide whether he could be forcibly medicated. Sell said that by that time, the solitary confinement had already began to make him "lose it." He testified for more than hour.
At the hearing, a psychiatrist hired by Sell testified that Sell needed to be in a nurturing environment. It was his opinion that drugs would be of no use. The prison doctor, however, testified that the only way to treat Sell was through medication.
Over time, Sell's family and friends began to seek news media attention. By Dec. 27, Sell's commitment had expired, yet Sell was held anyway. On Jan. 31, Sell's lawyers filed papers seeking to have Sell released from jail. There have been no court hearings since then.
Allegations of mistreatment
The government also is defending itself against allegations that Sell has been mistreated. Court records show that two videotapes exist that could show Sell was abused at the Springfield prison hospital.
A federal judge this week denied Sell's lawyers the rights to see the tapes.
The lawyers claim that guards drugged Sell and chained him to a concrete slab for 19 hours in November - less than a week after Sell had been denied permission to talk to a reporter. In a separate allegation, the lawyers say the guards scalded Sell with hot water, handcuffed him behind his back, threw him down and dragged him to his cell in February.
U.S. Rep. Jim Talent, R-Mo., wrote to Sell's brother on Feb. 3 saying he had asked for the Justice Department to investigate alleged mistreatment of Sell.
Since February, a flurry of letters have gone from Talent and Sens. Christopher Bond, R-Mo., and John Ashcroft, R-Mo., asking for federal investigations. While Springfield Prison Warden Bill Hedrick insists Sell "has not been subjected to inhumane treatment," he states that both incidents are under internal investigation.
Hedrick and other officials at the facility have refused to respond to a reporter's questions outlined in two letters in June.
Sell calls himself "a broken man."
"I don't know what I'd do if they threw me out on the streets right now," said Sell, a 1976 University of Missouri School of Medicine graduate. "I don't know how to even start earning a living again."
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