Texas: Where you cant take guns away from someone with severe schizophrenia, but you can let someone who does not know what year it is and cannot identify the president stand trial, let that person represent themselves and call their own auditory hallucinations to testify, and sentence them to death. Panetti conducts his defense dressed as a cowboy in a purple suit and a hat. He attempts to call more than 200 witnesses, including John F. Kennedy, the pope, Anne Bancroft, and Jesus Christ. (The last he later recanted: Jesus Christ, he doesn’t need a subpoena. He’s right here with me, and we’ll get into that, Panetti said in court.) He interrogates one prospective jury member as to whether the person had any “Indian blood,” before launching into a tirade about an event he called Wounded Elbow—conflating the battle of Wounded Knee with something to do with the Ayatollah Khomeini. He cross-examines himself on the stand, addressing his alter ego, Sarge. He gets rid of documents prepared for him by backup counsel because he was certain the prison guards were colluding against him. He presents no mitigating evidence. The judge declines to accept crucial medical records because Panetti had drawn all over them.
Posted on: Wed, 19 Nov 2014 22:41:46 +0000
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