Maybe Desai should have minored in acting as a medical student

Personally, I think he should have tried the bathrobe.

It worked for Vincent "Chin" Gigante. There's no reason to believe it wouldn't have done the job for Dr. Dipak Desai.

You remember Gigante. He was the boss of New York's Genovese crime family. He faked crazy for years in an effort to keep himself out of a criminal courtroom and a penitentiary cell. As part of his act, Gigante liked to wander the streets near his Greenwich Village home in his bathrobe.

Not one of those satin numbers favored by gigolos, or one of those super-plush ensembles that people are tempted to steal from fancy hotels. It was more like something you would pick up at Sears during the Christmas shopping season for an uncle you liked about 25 bucks worth.

But for many years that bathrobe worked like a magic cloak for Gigante, whom the New York press sometimes referred to as "The Oddfather."

Odd like a fox, if you ask me.

As part of his defense strategy, that bathrobe paid far more dividends than a $400-an-hour mouthpiece. While it didn't cure his legal maladies, faking crazy bought Gigante precious time on the outside. And as a wise man once said, the worst day on Sullivan Street beats the best day in prison.

Gigante performed his routine effectively from 1990 to 1997 before the Oddfather show was canceled by federal prosecutors. He eventually even admitted he had been only pretending to be mentally ill. Gigante died in a federal prison medical facility in Springfield, Mo., in 2005 at age 77.

Fast forward to 2012, which finds Las Vegas' Dr. Desai at last being found competent to stand trial in a state criminal case that developed as a result of a 2007 hepatitis C outbreak at his medical clinics. After weighing the testimony of medical experts who examined Desai to determine whether the effects of strokes he supposedly suffered had impaired his ability to assist with his defense, District Judge Kathleen Delaney issued her decision on Thursday.

Delaney didn't exactly come out and say Desai has been pretending to be a stroke victim, but she pointed to substantial evidence that illustrates he has been exaggerating his physical and mental impairments. Which is a nice way of saying he has been faking it in an effort to delay the inevitable: a trial that threatens to send him to prison and expose him as a wealthy man who endangered many lives in an effort to save a few bucks. Sources who once worked with Desai have reported his obsession with pinching pennies in his colonoscopy mills even when reusing syringes put patients at risk.

Desai's defense attorney has argued that his client's memory loss and other cognitive challenges weren't effectively measured when the physician was evaluated. The problem for the defense, of course, is that there's been more than one evaluation of Desai's mental and physical ailments.

And on Friday, the Review-Journal reported the testimony of a treating psychiatrist who said Desai failed in his attempt to make himself seem incompetent.

Maybe Desai should have minored in acting while he was majoring in medicine. He just wasn't convincing in the role of a guy not in control of his mental faculties.

But the fact is, prisons aren't populated by men in full control of their faculties. Penitentiaries are glorified asylums that teem with dysfunctional souls doing their best to live with their past transgressions. I get the feeling Desai would fit in just fine with the sociopaths.

If convicted of racketeering, insurance fraud and neglecting his patients in the state case, and multiple counts of health care fraud in the federal investigation, Desai will need to up his game in the acting department.

Or at least buy a bathrobe.

John L. Smith's column appears Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. Email him at Smith@reviewjournal.com or call 702-383-0295. He also blogs at lvrj.com/blogs/smith.