NEW YORK — Judges ruled Wednesday that a man who was charged with theft for saying he owned a famous Manhattan hotel where he had been living rent-free for years was not fit to stand trial.
Doctors who checked out Mickey Barreto said he wasn’t mentally fit to be charged with a crime, and prosecutors confirmed that during a court hearing on Wednesday, according to the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
The office of Bragg said that Judge Cori Weston gave Barreto until November 13 to find a good hospital mental health care facility.
The New York Times was the first to report that Barreto was getting outpatient treatment for mental health and drug abuse problems. However, doctors recently decided that he did not fully understand the criminal proceedings after a test.
The claims of a drug problem were brushed off by Barreto as just “partying.” He also said that prosecutors are trying to get him hospitalized because they don’t have a good case against him. He does see some good things.
“They used to be mean and say things like, ‘He’s a criminal,’ but now they don’t talk about crime at all.” The important thing now is, “Oh, poor thing.” “Finally, we got him to agree to go to treatment,” Barreto told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
An attorney for Barreto named Brian Hutchinson didn’t answer the phone right away when asked for a statement. The Times said that during the hearing on Wednesday, he said he was going to ask his client’s present treatment provider to take him on.
In February, Barreto was charged with 24 counts, some of which were felonies for theft and criminal contempt.
They say he faked a lease to the New Yorker Hotel that said the building belonged to him and gave him ownership of the whole thing.
Then, among other things, he tried to charge one of the hotel’s tenants rent and told the hotel’s bank to move its accounts to him.
At a key hearing in 2018, Barreto claimed in court that he had tenant’s rights because he had paid about $200 for a one-night stay and the hotel had not sent a lawyer. This was because of a strange part of the city’s housing rules.
Barreto said he stayed at the hotel for free because the Unification Church, which owned the building, didn’t want to negotiate a lease with him and also couldn’t officially kick him out.
Right now, his illegal case may be leading him to a way out.
“So, yes, it is better in some ways, if you ask me.” Because they don’t treat me like a thief but like a crazy person, Barreto told the AP.
The huge Art Deco building with its big red “New Yorker” sign is a well-known landmark in midtown Manhattan. It was built in 1930.
Famous fighters like Muhammad Ali and others stayed there when they had fights at Madison Square Garden, which is only a block away. It has more than 1,000 rooms, and Nikola Tesla lived in one of them for ten years. NBC also showed the show from its Terrace Room.
But the New Yorker stopped being a hotel in 1972. For many years, it was used as a church, and in 1994, part of the building returned as a hotel.
