Robey Defends Position

Dr. Ames Robey said today that if he loses his job because of accused multiple murderer Gary Addison Taylor, other state-employed psychiatrists would feel their jobs are in jeopardy. Donald C. Smith, acting director of the state Department of Mental Health, suspended Robey Wednesday from his post as director of the state Center for Forensic Psychiatry at Ypsilanti State Hospital. Smith said Robey is indefinitely suspended pending the outcome of a probé of Robey's handling of the mid-1972 release of Taylor from the hospital. Found not guilty by reason of insanity in a series of shootings of Oakland County women in 1956 and 1957, Taylor had been confined to the hospital until Robey's decisión to release him on an outpatient - y v_ t ur f status. "If he (Smith tried to fire me for clinical judgmeñt," Robey said this morning, "I don't think he could keep any of the doctors in the state." Taylor had been ordered to report to the center for periodic treatments following his release but failed to do so. He was listed as an escapee more than a year after his release. Taylor has been linked to several murders that qccurred since his release, but Robey maintains that other psychiatrists share his opinión that Taylor is not mentally ill. "None of the doctors have disagreed," Robey said today. "No one has diagnosed him as psychotic or mentally ill" since at least 1967, Robey said. Medical evaluations of Taylor have described as having an "anti-social personality and a sexual deviation," said Robey, but he said those are not mental illnesses. In announcing Robey's suspension Wednesday, Smith said Robey's handling of the Taylor case "has raised questions regarding procedures and policies which govern the release of persons who have been found not guilty by reason of insanity." Taylor was released prior to the recent double-whammy effect of a Michigan Supreme Cour't decisión and a new mental health law. The combination of the two would have led to Taylor's release this year anyway, if a panel of psychiatrists failed to find him mentally ill. In a 1970, interview, Robey told The News that the center staff can find no evidence of mental illness in some 60 per cent of the patients referred there. Smiih said Wednesday that Robey's suspension is not a disciplinary one. It was ordered to "expedite" the probe into the Taylor matter, said Smith. Robey has pravided Smith with data on the case but Smith said Wednesday it is "not sufficiently complete to arrive at a fair and equitable judgment." Smith sáid he has appointed a five member team from his department to interview the center's staff and review documents and records. Robey said he learned of the suspension when a courier-delivered letter was handed to his children at his Ann Arbor home shortly after 4:30 p.m. Wednesday. In the letter, Smith ordered Robey "not to appear on the ... premises unless re quested to do so by myself." Robey, 48, has been criticized for failing to report Taylor as an escapee for more than a year after his release. Robey has traced that partly to the workload at the center, which he says is understaffed and overloaded. Robey revealed today that Smith asked for his resignation in November. "He said that I had lost the confidence of the governor and the Director of the Department of Mental Health (Smith)," Robey said. Smith offered him posts at either Traverse City State Hospital or at another state facility in Newberry in the Upper Península. "For someone who has worked 17 years in forensic psychiatry to go to ' eral hospital psychiatry is somewhat like asking a highly specialized neurosurgeon to go back to pulling out tonsils as he did in his first two years," Robey said today. He said he turned down Smith's request. Smith said Robey's salary will be suspended during the probe but will be escrowed and may be returned to him, depending on the outcome. Robey, outspoken and often the center of controversy, was suspended for two weeks in 1974 by outgoing State Mental Health Director E. Gordon Yudashkin, whom Smith succeeded. The suspension followed the escape of 12 of the center's patients, all considered dangerous. Robey claimed the center was overloaded, calling the center a "security nightmare." Yudashkin blamed the escapes , on alleged administrative failures and alleged employé negligence.