MINEOLA, N.Y. -- After spending months insisting that he was sane and staging courtroom spectacles from the bizarre to the surreal, Colin Ferguson has turned to the lawyers he once dismissed -- to appeal his murder conviction on the grounds that he was never mentally fit to stand trial, one of the lawyers said yesterday.
Ferguson, 37, whose defense of himself included his claim that there were 93 charges against him because the killings occurred in 1993, had previously refused to seek a finding that he was mentally incompetent or to resort to an insanity defense at the trial.
Instead, he dismissed the lawyers who questioned his sanity, William M. Kunstler and Ronald L. Kuby, and based his case on conspiracy theories and straight-faced refutation of overwhelming witness testimony that it was he who killed six people and wounded 19 others on the Long Island Railroad.
Mr. Kunstler said yesterday that Ferguson had called him and that they had agreed to challenge not only the finding that he was competent to stand trial, but the way competency is judged in New York state.
"The issue is a powerful one that needs to be raised in this state and elsewhere across the country," Mr. Kunstler said.
The development comes a day after a Nassau County jury found Ferguson guilty of murdering six railroad commuters and trying to kill 19 others on Dec. 7, 1993.
Mr. Kunstler said that he and Mr. Kuby would represent Ferguson when he returns to court March 20 for sentencing when they would file a motion questioning whether Judge Donald E. Belfi was correct in finding Ferguson competent last December.
Ferguson could be sentenced to 200 years to life in prison.
Assuming that the court would probably reject such a motion to avoid a retrial, Mr. Kunstler said he would then move that the judge should have revisited the issue during the trial because of "the bizarre behavior of Ferguson and his obvious inability as a mentally ill man to defend himself, pursue a defense and question witnesses."
Should the judge deny these motions, Mr. Kunstler said he and Mr. Kuby would raise them in an appeal, questioning the process involved in finding a defendant competent and allowing him to defend himself.
George Peck, who prosecuted Ferguson, said the trial transcript would support the view that Ferguson was not only competent, but very capable of representing himself in court.
"He knows right from wrong, knows the measure and quality of his actions and was able to ask questions and digest points of law," Mr. Peck said. "And for anyone to suggest that he is not competent is simply not borne out by the facts. He is very, very competent."
Mr. Kunstler and Mr. Kuby served as attorneys and legal advisers to Ferguson for more than 10 months last year. In December, Ferguson dismissed them, rejecting their suggestion that he pursue an insanity defense based in part on a theory that his mental illness was aggravated by the cultural shock and bias he endured as a black man in the United States.
Ferguson emigrated 12 years ago from Kingston, Jamaica, where he lived a privileged life as the member of a well-to-do family.