BOSTON--In recent weeks, one Richard E. Fenton has appeared at several debates for gubernatorial candidates, pitching himself as an outsider who would reform the state's judicial system.

Fenton, who is homeless, is the most unusual of candidates. He says he is running for governor because he has been a victim of manipulation by the Massachusetts legal and judicial establishment.

Those who have known Fenton for more than 40 years says his life story is tragic. Some claim he is emotionally unstable.

"He's mentally ill," says William H. Mann, the former police chief in Medfield, Mass. "We took him to a mental institution (Edith Nourse Rogers Memorial Veterans Hospital in Bedford, Mass.)--when he had his first breakdown, he acted up here." Mann says Fenton was moved with the consent of his father and his brother.

Karen Kubick, public affairs director at the hospital, confirmed yesterday that Fenton received outpatient care during the 1960s, but she could not specify the type of treatment he received.

Since then, Fenton, who makes court reform his main concern, has had numerous problems with the law. The candidates says he has defended himself in more than 100 court appearances.

Fenton says his legal troubles began when he was a photojournalist in Medfield during the 1950s. At the time, one of Fenton's high school friends, Wade Henderson, committed suicide after shooting his mother-in-law.

Fenton insists to this day that Henderson was murdered and says the Medfield police attempted to cover up the murder. But Mann, the police chief, disputes that.

"I don't know [Henderson's wife], and Wade killed everybody in his family," Mann says. "I was not even in the police department at the time."

In May 1960, Fenton says police records indicate that he attempted to commit suicide by jumping into the Charles River. Fenton contends that he was the victim of police harassment in this case.

"The officers who took me to the river bragged about killing Wade Henderson and his mother-in-law," Fenton says. "I was accepted to law school--I wasn't going to commit suicide."

Fenton says he was "railroaded to a psychiatric ward" after the apparent suicide attempt.

But Fenton insists he is completely sane--more sane, in fact, than those who criticize him.

"They had created a stigma about me," he says. "I escaped from the [mental institution]; they're so stupid."

From this point onward, Fenton has been in front of judges on numerous occasions, ranging from divorce proceedings to property questions to drunken driving charges.