MAN WHO TOOK HOSTAGES AT TEMPLE TO SERVE TIME

A panel of Maryland State psychiatrists recommended unanimously Thursday that Clarence Leake be released from the Clifton T. Perkins Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

Doctors said Leake was no longer suffering from the delusions that led him to take hostages at the Washington Temple nearly two years ago.Leake was found not criminally responsible for the most serious of the charges in the temple takeover at a trial in Rockville, Md., in June. A similar panel from Perkins Hospital reported then that Leake was not mentally capable of standing trial.

Judge Peter J. Messittes ruled that Leake could be tried, and a jury found him not responsible for kidnapping, but guilty of two counts of false imprisonment. On Sept. 6 Messittes sentenced Leake to 15 months in jail on those charges.

Perkins Counsel Janet Brown said after Thursday's hearing that she expected a hearing examiner to forward a recommendation that Leake be released to the judge in about 10 days. If there is no objection, his release would be automatic.

Messittes said on Tuesday that as soon as Leake is released from Perkins he will begin serving his jail sentence.

Leake's father, Donald Leake, was at Thursday's hearing, but a dozen anti-Mormon witnesses he said would be there didn't appear.