Frank R. James, who federal prosecutors said carried out a violent and well-planned attack on New York’s subway system this week, was ordered to be held without bail on Thursday during his first appearance in federal court. His lawyers asked a judge to ensure Mr. James received psychiatric care in jail, and later said their client had called a tip line to turn himself in.
Mr. James’s brief initial court appearance marked a new stage in a case that shocked a city already on edge about crime and safety. It was the bloodiest crime on the city’s public-transit system in nearly four decades, and came as many New Yorkers were wading with trepidation back into the routines of prepandemic life.
Prosecutors say Mr. James set off a smoke bomb on a crowded subway car, then unleashed a barrage of bullets into the crowd, turning a morning commute into a scene of bloody chaos. At least 30 people were injured, according to federal prosecutors.
“The defendant terrifyingly opened fire on passengers on a crowded subway train, interrupting their morning commute in a way this city hasn’t seen in more than 20 years,” Sara K. Winik, an assistant U.S. attorney, said in court on Thursday. “The defendant’s attack was premeditated; it was carefully planned; and it caused terror among the victims and our entire city.”
Mr. James is charged with carrying out a terrorist attack on a mass transit system, and faces up to life in prison if convicted.
Federal prosecutors asked that Mr. James be detained until his trial, arguing that his “mere presence outside federal custody presents a serious risk of danger to the community.”
Mr. James’s lawyers said they did not object to Mr. James’s detention, but asked the magistrate judge to ensure that he received a psychiatric evaluation and other medical care at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center, where he is being held.
During brief comments in court and in a filing earlier Thursday, federal prosecutors painted an image of a man untethered from law-abiding society, who had carefully planned each step of the attack — including his plan to evade capture.
In their filing, prosecutors said Mr. James entered the subway system Tuesday morning in disguise, wearing a yellow hard hat and an orange workman’s jacket with reflective tape. On the train, as it neared the 36th Street station in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, he fired “approximately 33 rounds in cold blood at terrified passengers who had nowhere to run and nowhere to hide,” federal prosecutors wrote, adding that the gunfire could have ultimately ended in a massacre.
Outside the courthouse on Thursday, Mia Eisner-Grynberg, a court-appointed lawyer for Mr. James, said that her client deserved a fair trial, warning that “initial reports” from the police and news outlets “can be inaccurate.”
“We are all still learning about what happened on that train and we caution against a rush to judgment,” she said. “What we do know is this: Yesterday, Mr. James saw his photograph on the news. He called Crime Stoppers to help. He told them where he was.”
Federal prosecutors wrote in their memo that while Mr. James’s lengthy arrest record — nearly a dozen low-level offenses, including reckless endangerment, larceny and trespassing — might seem “unremarkable,” it paints “a picture of a person with a penchant for defying authority and who is unable or unwilling to conform his conduct to law.”
While the broad details of Tuesday morning’s attack have been well-established, prosecutors have not described a potential motive for what they say Mr. James did, though the criminal complaint notes that Mr. James posted videos on social media recording furious complaints on a wide variety of topics.
It also remained unclear why a train line that cuts through immigrant-heavy neighborhoods in Brooklyn, like Sunset Park, a home to immigrants from many Asian and Latin American countries, became the target of a brutal shooting. And it was uncertain what Mr. James did between the time of the attack and his capture the next day.
In the hours after the shooting, the police discovered a collection of belongings on the train, including a Glock 9-millimeter handgun, three ammunition magazines and a credit card with Mr. James’s name on it. They also found ammunition and other weapons in a storage unit and apartment rented by Mr. James, prosecutors noted.
He was captured by the authorities on Wednesday afternoon, near a McDonald’s in the East Village, about 29 hours into an expansive manhunt that featured several federal and state agencies and hundreds of officers. The arrest took place without a struggle as a rush of calls, videos and tweets poured in from New Yorkers saying they had helped identify him or had spotted him before his arrest.
Michael Gold and Sean Piccoli contributed reporting.