Mental Hearing Set in Tainted Blood Case

Joseph E. Markowski, the reputed street hustler accused of attempted murder for selling AIDS-contaminated blood, was ordered Wednesday to undergo mental competency proceedings after his attorney told a judge his client appears to be psychotic and unfit to stand trial.

The lawyer, Guy O’Brien, said the defendant was transferred this week to County-USC Medical Center’s jail ward, where he is being kept strapped to a gurney. When O’Brien visited him Tuesday, Markowski, 29, was “non-communicative” and his speech was rambling, the attorney said.

“He appeared to be imagining things,” O’Brien told Los Angeles Municipal Judge Glenette Blackwell. “. . . His hands and arms were twitching uncontrollably.”

Markowski seemed “to be undergoing a psychotic episode,” the attorney added.

Since February, Markowski has been placed under psychiatric observation seven times because of suicidal behavior, according to Los Angeles police detectives. Most recently, he spent a day in County-USC’s psychiatric ward after allegedly causing a disturbance in a bank on June 23.

From Nov. 13, 1986, to Jan. 10, 1987, Markowski was also a voluntary patient at Metropolitan State Hospital in Norwalk, sources close to the case said.

He was charged last week with four counts of attempted murder and six other felonies for selling AIDS-tainted blood to a private plasma center and twice having sex with another transient man.

Blackwell transferred the case to the Superior Court’s mental health department for a hearing today. She ordered the parties in the matter to report to her July 31 on Markowski’s condition.

Deputy Dist. Atty. David H. Guthman, who heads his office’s psychiatric section, said the mental health court could either appoint psychiatrists to examine Markowski at a future date or order an immediate examination.

If found to be incompetent, Markowski would be hospitalized until deemed ready to stand trial.

Under California law, a person cannot be tried if he or she “is unable to understand the nature of the criminal proceedings or to assist counsel in the conduct of a defense in a rational manner.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Antonio Barreto Jr., the prosecutor in Markowski’s criminal case, did not oppose the competency hearing.

“If the guy is in some kind of psychotic episode, then he is. If he’s not, he’s not. The only way to find out is to have a proceeding about it,” the prosecutor said.

In another development Wednesday, a Superior Court judge directed Paris Shaerrell, the man who allegedly twice had sex with Markowski in March, to have a blood test for acquired immune deficiency syndrome while in county jail.

Shaerrell, 44, had pleaded guilty to grand theft in connection with an April 23 incident. His attorney, Deputy Public Defender Victor Salerno, said he expects Shaerrell to be placed on probation as a result of a plea bargain.

Delay in Sentencing

Judge Robert T. Altman delayed sentencing until July 30 so that Shaerrell can be tested while still in custody and probation officers can determine whether family members can take care of him in the event that he has the fatal disease.

“I think it’s appropriate,” Salerno said of the testing.

Meanwhile, additional details have begun to emerge about Markowski.

A woman in his hometown of Grand Rapids, Mich., who said she was close to him while they were both in high school, described the defendant as a quiet teen-ager who began drinking and using drugs at an early age.

The friend, who asked to remain anonymous, said in a telephone interview that Markowski was on bad terms with his widowed mother. Margaret Markowski, the woman said, frequently threw him out of the house for his behavior toward her and was shocked when he disclosed his homosexuality.

Family members have declined to discuss Markowski.

Twice, when he was 18, Markowski tried but failed to get himself admitted to a mental hospital, the friend said.

“He was pretty stable when I met him,” the woman said. “But (in 1979) he started showing a different side of himself. . . . He would sit and cry and just completely lose it. . . . He used to say, ‘I don’t know whether I’m coming or going.’ ”

Another friend, Weston Foster, 25, also described “times when he would just cry, and I would just listen to him.”

Foster, who said he met Markowski at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in the Los Angeles area a year ago, contended that his friend is “not crazy” but has “severe mental problems.”

He said Markowski was enrolled in a residential treatment program for alcohol and drug abusers for two months this year, but was asked to leave in April after he turned up intoxicated.

“When he’s clean and sober, he’s a wonderful young man,” Foster said.