John Hinckley had his poetry and his obsession with Jodie Foster. Colin Ferguson had his bizarre theories and disturbing courtroom shenanigans.

And when it comes to Ted Kaczynski, there are countless details that draw people to the conclusion that he is mentally ill, from his alleged manifesto to an apparent suicide attempt.

But Hickley and Ferguson were both found competent to stand trial. And now, the same doctor who once received "A Poem for My Favorite Pregnant Psychiatrist" from Hinckley will decide if Kaczynski is fit to be tried as well.

Dr. Sally Johnson, who sat through 57 sessions with Hinckley, spent this week in the lineup room at the Sacramento County jail with the man believed to be the Unabomber.

Her first task was to determine what mental illness he suffers from -- widely believed to be paranoid schizophrenia.

Then she likely asked some very basic questions about his trial and courts in general. Does he know what he's charged with? Does he know what the judge does? Does he know that the prosecutors will be working against him? Does he have a motivation to be found not guilty?

It will have been a simple civics quiz for this Harvard-educated math prodigy with an IQ believed to be above 160. But these mundane questions belie a complex set of Supreme Court decisions and interpretations of constitutional rights that allow almost anyone to stand trial.

There are two basic questions, laid out in a 1960 Supreme Court decision, that must be confirmed before a defendant can be found capable to go to trial: Can they work with their defense lawyers to help them present their case? And do they understand what is going on in the courtroom?

In other words, short of severe mental instability or sheer idiocy, the defendant tends to go on trial.

And the current standard was actually toughened up by the 38-year old high court decision, Dusky v. United States. In less than 300 words, Dusky raised the standard from its previous state, which required the defendant to have only the most basic grasp of facts and his or her surroundings.

Fortunately, the psychiatrists faced with the task of helping judges determine competency usually expand their probe beyond the words of a potentially unstable defendant. They usually talk to other people who can give them additional insight into the questions at hand, such as prison guards or the defendant's family. This helps ensure the defendant is not leading the doctor astray.

"Sometimes what they tell you is not the whole story," says Paul Applebaum, M.D., director of the psychiatry department at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center.

To combat that, the psychiatrist will talk to another set of crucial players: the defense lawyers.

"The attorney is the expert, because he or she is able to tell you the extent to which the defendant is cooperating," says Applebaum, who has conducted numerous competency tests.

When it comes to Johnson's interviews with Kaczynski, she probably won't delve too deeply into his reclusive lifestyle or ask about too many specifics about the crimes he is accused of.

"They don't necessarily need to talk to him about the alleged offense in order to do this evaluation," says Richard Bonnie, director of the University of Virginia's Institute of Law, Psychiatry and Public Policy. But, he adds, Kaczynski will need to tell them about his mental state -- past and present.

After her evaluation, Dr. Johnson will have two responsibilities: to write up a report about Kaczynski, which the judge and the defense -- but not the public -- will see, and to likely testify at a hearing next week at which the judge will make the final determination about whether the repeatedly delayed trial can finally push ahead.

"Some psychiatrists will take the next step and actually offer an opinion," says Applebaum. "Some psychiatrists will not."

In fact, given the complexity of this case and its rather volatile defendant, U.S. District Judge Garland Burrell will probably be the one left to transpose between Johnson's psychiatric opinion and the letter of the law. That gives him one decided advantage: the power to keep Ted Kaczynski from defending himself and potentially throwing the trial into chaos.

If Kaczynski is found competent, the law says he should be able to represent himself. But Burrell has a loophole. Recent Supreme Court decisions may give him the option to let Kaczynski go to trial, but not to represent himself, if the psychiatric evidence is there to show that Kaczynski's not capable of it.

"Nobody said it was a rose garden," says Bonnie. "The judge is going to have to continue to struggle with this and find the right way to manage this case....At the very bottom of this is: who's in control? What Kaczynski seems to be interested in is being in control, not representing himself."

At the very least, Burrell will probably assign Kaczynski some sort of co-counsel or advisor to assist with his case. But most important for the judge is to keep a close eye on the defense -- no matter who's in charge -- and make sure that Kaczynski gets a fair trial without abusing the system.

It will be a difficult tightrope to walk, and it may leave Burrell wishing one of the two other judges on his circuit who were offered the case before him had taken it.

If Burrell is too strict in his interpretation of the law, it opens the door for an appeal. If he's too lax, Kaczynski could turn this trial into a mockery of the justice system.

Some people think that was precisely what happened in 1995, when Colin Ferguson defended himself in a courtroom in Mineola, New York. Ferguson, who shot six people and wounded nineteen during a rampage on the Long Island Rail Road, was found competent to stand trial and represent himself.

Ferguson punctuated what many considered a lucid defense with some surreal moments, such as his diatribe about how the state devised ninety-three counts against him because his shooting spree occurred in 1993, or his cross examination of his own victims. It may have been odd behavior for the courtroom -- and possibly damaging to the court's dignity -- but it wasn't enough to keep Judge Donald Belfi from allowing Ferguson to defend himself.

"It has to be obstreperous type conduct, not necessarily simply someone who's argumentative," says George Peck, who prosecuted Ferguson and is now a judge in Long Island, N.Y. "If someone is interfering with the conduct of the court, then you can force a lawyer on him."

So what will Burrell do?

It's anyone's guess, but one thing is certain: he knows the world is watching, and the legal tangle into which he's walked will be reviewed for years to come -- not just because it's presumably the Unabomber on trial but because it could be a matter of Ted Kaczynski's life or death.

"When capital punishment is involved and they know it's going to scrutinzed by every court in the land up to the Supreme Court -- that's a judge's nightmare and they act accordingly," says Bob Humphries, who oversaw the prosecution of convicted Virginia murderer Joseph O'Dell.

O'Dell's case helps underscore the drawbacks in the freedom for self-representation. In 1986, he went on trial for the rape and murder of Helen Schartner, a waitress in Virginia Beach, Virginia. During trial, O'Dell repeatedly wavered between representing himself and allowing lawyers to help him -- and ultimately had the best of both worlds: the chance to act as his own lawyer with co-counsel there to do much of the heavy lifting.

Not that it helped him. Despite his excellent understanding of the law ("I've seen young lawyers out of law school who didn't do as good a job," says Humphries) and a failed 1997 attempt to use DNA tests to reverse the verdict, he was put to death last year.

That O'Dell was fighting to save his own life added to the drama and raised the stakes, and the same will be true if Kaczynski gets his way. That Kaczynski has neither the training, nor perhaps the mental acuity, to save himself makes the case an ethical minefield for some.

"He may sound like a lawyer but miss the main [point] of what his defense should be, which is diminished capacity or mental illness," says Richard Dieter, director of the Death Penalty Information Center. "Sometimes a judge can intervene and say, I'm not going to allow the death penalty in this case...but there isn't a lot of protection."

In fact, the argument goes, the government may have an obligation to act in an almost paternal fashion when it comes to a defendant whose mental illness may be pushing him towards a death he cannot rationally anticipate.

It is, after all, the same government who put Kaczynski on a twenty-four watch to try and avoid another suicide attempt so that he could go to trial and face the death penalty.

But a discrepancy remains between competency to stand trial and competency for self-representation. One way to fix it would be to change the standards for competency, and many psychiatrists are strong advocates of reform. In fact, one group sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation is developing a test that would not only help to create standardized competency standards for psychiatrists to use throughout the country but would make it more difficult for a borderline case to slip through.

Moreover, the MacArthur test, which Bonnie has worked on, will give psychiatrists a blueprint for testing defendants involved in specific trial situations. A defendant who wants to invoke the right to self-representation, for example, might be asked additional questions to prove that he or she is mentally competent for that particular task. The MacArthur standards could be available for use by late this year.

But concerns remain about self-representation. Some defendants, for instance, want to use their rights to turn the courtroom into a political soapbox.

Paul Hill, for example, chose to represent himself after he gunned down a doctor and a volunteer in front of an abortion clinic in Pensacola, Florida in 1994. His primary motivation was not acquittal but instead to get a death sentence and become a martyr for opponents of abortion.

"I don't know what Ted Kaczynski would do if allowed to represent himself, but it would not be a pretty picture," says Dieter. "His rantings and manifestos, I guess that's what he believes in. He might want to present it at trial."

No one knows whether his anti-technology screed is more important to him than his life. But no matter how perverse it may seem to outsiders, if Ted Kaczynski wants to chart a course that ends in death, no one can stop him.

"You have a constitutional right to be stupid, is what it boils down to," says Humphries.