DATE: Thursday, August 28, 1997             TAG: 9708280538

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B5   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MARC DAVIS, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: NORFOLK                           LENGTH:  100 lines

JUDGE SAYS U.S. IS NOT LIABLE FOR DOCTOR'S RAMPAGE HIS SPREE LEFT MAN DEAD ON STREET AND 2 WOUNDED IN 1991 IN PHILADELPHIA.

The federal government is not responsible for an Army doctor's shooting spree that left one man dead and two wounded on a crowded Philadelphia street in 1991, a judge has ruled.

U.S. District Judge Rebecca Beach Smith ruled this week that the government could not have foreseen the deadly rampage of Dr. Jean-Claude Pierre Hill, of Surry County, Va., on April 8, 1991.

Smith also ruled that the Army and the Department of Veterans Affairs gave Hill appropriate medical care during two years of treatment at various military mental hospitals, including Fort Eustis in Newport News and the Salem VA Hospital near Roanoke. Hill had a history of violent mental illness.

Smith also ruled that the Army did not have day-to-day control over Hill in April 1991 and therefore had no duty to prevent his actions. Hill was an outpatient at Fort Eustis, awaiting medical discharge, at the time of the shooting.

Hill's victims and the government received the ruling Wednesday.

``The court is sympathetic to plaintiffs, who are without a doubt wholly innocent victims of an awful tragedy,'' Smith wrote in a 48-page opinion. ``However . . . plaintiffs have failed to meet their burden of proof in this tragic case.''

Hill's surviving victims, and the family of the murdered man, had sued the government, seeking $14 million. They said the government was negligent in treating Hill and in failing to prevent the shootings.

The government's lawyer, Assistant U.S. Attorney Lawrence R. Leonard, said the ruling sends a message to doctors and hospitals: That it is proper to treat mental patients in the least restrictive setting possible, under the circumstances.

``A ruling for the plaintiffs would really give pause to any physician who is faced with competing interests'' of patients' rights and protecting the public, Leonard said. ``How are we going to view people with mental illness? Are we going to treat them as criminals? Or are we going to treat them as patients?''

The plaintiffs may appeal.

``We continue to believe the government provided woefully inadequate care to Dr. Hill and failed to appreciate his extreme dangerousness,'' said the plaintiffs' attorneys, Randy D. Singer and Andrew M. Sacks.

Hill was a 29-year-old Army captain with a history of violence and psychosis when he shot three men in downtown Philadelphia in April 1991. The victims, insurance executives returning from a birthday lunch, apparently were chosen at random.

Police arrested Hill the next day at his parents' house in Surry County. A Philadelphia jury found him guilty but mentally ill. A judge sent him to prison for life.

Hill's victims sued the government in Newport News last year. A two-week trial was held in Norfolk last month.

In her ruling, Judge Smith said the plaintiffs failed to prove three points required to win. Her responses to those points:

The government could not have foreseen Hill's rampage, Smith ruled.

In the past, Smith noted, Hill had attacked people who tried to confine him or who challenged his unrealistic views. For example, Hill attacked a judge and a bailiff at a commitment hearing, and later attacked doctors in mental hospitals.

In each attack, Hill was obviously psychotic.

``The Philadelphia shooting was quite different,'' Smith wrote. ``Hill had never had any contact with plaintiffs, had never seen or spoken to them, and had never been restrained by them in any way. They were random victims.''

The judge concluded that Hill was not psychotic during the attack. He acted calmly throughout - parked his car, casually walked toward the victims, shot them, then calmly got back into his car, adjusted the mirror and drove away.

The Army and Department of Veterans Affairs properly treated Hill's mental illness, the judge ruled.

From 1989 to 1991, Hill was in and out of various government mental hospitals. Sometimes he was held in four-point restraints for weeks at a time. He had an unhealthy fascination with guns and knives, and at one point he threatened to drop a nuclear bomb on Montreal or Minnesota, for no apparent reason.

But as time went by, Hill got better. Doctors eventually let him leave the Salem VA Hospital on his own, to live independently with his parents in Surry County, as an outpatient at Fort Eustis.

That was appropriate, Smith ruled, because Hill did not show signs of violence or homicidal thoughts in his later months.

``The fact that a patient has been violent or has threatened violence in the past does not give his doctors carte blanche to lock him up or otherwise restrain him, unless the patient appears to be a danger to himself or to others at the time,'' Smith wrote.

The judge also ruled that Hill's medication was appropriate, as were his infrequent visits with his treating doctor at Fort Eustis. The plaintiffs attacked the government on both points at trial.

The government did not ``take charge'' or ``exercise control'' over Hill in April 1991, and therefore had no duty to protect others from him. Hill was an outpatient living at home at the time of the attack.

``Subject to military orders or not,'' Smith wrote, ``Hill was a patient, not a prisoner. His mental illness, in and of itself, was a disease, not a crime. . . . His military doctors could not forcibly confine him once a reasonable medical determination was made . . . that he no longer appeared to be a danger to himself or to others.'' ILLUSTRATION: Dr. Jean-Claude Pierre Hill, of Surry County, had a

history of violent mental illness before he went on a shooting spree

in Philadelphia. KEYWORDS: RULING LAWSUIT

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