White House Intruder’s Bid for Release Fails

A federal magistrate, declaring that accused White House intruder Leland William Modjeski is “in dire need of medical treatment,” ordered the mentally troubled Virginia man held in federal custody Thursday pending his trial on charges of assault and weapons violations.

U.S. Magistrate Patrick J. Attridge rejected entreaties by public defender Rita Pendry to release Modjeski to a private mental treatment center until his trial. Attridge said that Modjeski legally could walk out of such a center if he were to dislike his treatment, noting that he had refused psychiatric help in recent weeks.

He ordered that Modjeski remain at the District of Columbia-operated St. Elizabeths mental hospital “until the first available federal medical center can take him,” a process that Pendry said could take weeks.

Once he is transferred, Modjeski will be given a mental evaluation to determine if he understands the charges against him. If not, he almost certainly would be committed to a mental institution for an indefinite period, or until such time as he does understand the charges and the case against can proceed in court.

During a 90-minute detention hearing conducted by Attridge, federal prosecutors presented evidence that Modjeski, 37, showed many signs of mental illness in the days before he scaled a White House fence at 10:45 p.m. May 23 and was shot in the arm as he wrestled with a Secret Service agent on the South Lawn. The agent also was wounded.

Modjeski, wearing blue slacks and a checkered shirt, sat silently alongside Pendry as Mark Tinsley, a Secret Service investigator, detailed what he found in medical records of the Woodburn Center for Mental Health in suburban Virginia.

Modjeski, who was brought to the center by his wife, Mary Ann, was found on May 8 to be suffering from chronic paranoid schizophrenia, Tinsley testified. He added that Mary Ann Modjeski reported that “her husband was not making sense, that he was abusing marijuana . . . and had threatened violence toward his wife and others.”

The investigator said records showed that Modjeski refused treatment at Woodburn, not far from his Falls Church, Va., home.

Modjeski’s wife called the center twice in ensuing days, once reporting that he was hallucinating and refusing to take anti-psychotic medication, Tinsley said.

“She said she was afraid to go home because he was angry,” he added.

Tinsley said that the center’s mobile crisis unit went to the Modjeski home on May 18 after Mary Ann Modjeski called to say that she feared her husband was about to kill himself. But Modjeski left the house before the unit arrived, saying that he did not want to be committed.

Fired from his part-time job as a pizza deliveryman last November, Modjeski secretly may have wanted to be killed in his assault on the White House, officials have speculated. Tinsley said that Modjeski’s dismissal from his job by Pizza Hut resulted from “inappropriate behavior” toward a female employee and that he had earlier lost a job with an electronics firm.