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A country gone insane ...

By Kirsten Edwards - posted Monday, 15 May 2000


The judge also asked, (for some reason) "can you tell me how the word "rifle" or "gun" or "weapon" would be … show me how they would relate to what you just said?"

Weeks replied:

Well in the military we call it a weapon. The … No. I think it’s the other way round. I think it’s a weapon in the court of law. It’s a weapon … but in the military it’s a firearm … or either I may have it crossed up. Either … either one way or the other … [a gun?] ... well that’s ghetto slang. You know, that’s more less slang or something or that nature … so it’s not really recognised as …i t has no honorable respect using that term like nigger, you know. It’s offensive. See what I’m saying?

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The judge replies "I understand exactly what you are saying".

I wanted to extract those statements in full because Weeks ability to discuss the different descriptions for guns led the judge to decide he had signs of advanced intelligence, perhaps genius. On the basis of the remarks about creation the judge decided Weeks had philosophical and religious insights that were "remarkable", in fact Weeks was in keeping with some of the philosophical greats and the record of his statements were so thought-provoking they would probably be of interest for years to come.

Am I missing something or were there two insane people in that courtroom? Anyway, having decided Weeks was both seriously mentally disturbed and a philosophical genius of great potential the judge decided there was no reason not to put the future Aristotle to death and Weeks was duly executed.

Horace Kelly

Horace Kelly was the one who talked in numbers and had the collection of his own faeces on his shelf. He thought death row was a vocational school and on completion he would receive not an execution but a framed certificate. Like Varnall Weeks, even the prison doctors thought Horace Kelly was insane. This is pretty remarkable in the US. Prison doctors tend to be a lot like the knight in that Monty Python movie nerds are always quoting: missing an arm? Mere flesh wound. Brain missing due a frontal lobotomy? No problem at all. Like to roll your faeces into balls? Well, we all have hobbies …

So even if the prison doctor thought he was insane how did Kelly fail to be found incompetent? The main factor that seemed to influence the jury was that the state hired a psychologist who testified she played Kelly at tic-tac-toe (noughts and crosses). They drew three times, he won twice. There’s a story that goes around about the chicken always appearing at county fairs in Kentucky that can play tic-tac-toe. One day a man told his friend that he had gone to the fair and he had lost to the chicken. His friend gently suggested that perhaps the man wouldn’t want to go spreading that around. The man replied: "Why not? I barely ever play tic-tac-toe, but that chicken, he plays all the time …"

The Maturana Sagarama

With that background you realise how hard it is to be found too incompetent to be executed. But it does happen. In Arizona, Claude Maturana was actually found incompetent to be executed. Like Horace Kelly he suffers from chronic paranoid schizophrenia and he also tends to talk in numbers. Last August he told doctors he was going home soon because he had gone through the "American white flag check of the badge No. 5071.3 and veterans' No. 620." Two months earlier, when asked about his death sentence, Mr. Maturana had told doctors that it meant nothing because of "Rule 11, Margaret 3," that he was an agent for the "Federal F&I" and "Central TBS" and that he was involved with "NATO TOBY" divisions. Mr. Maturana's attorney, Carla G. Ryan told the National Law Journal that Mr Maturana had asked why her office was not hooked up to the electronic device inside his chest that allows him to communicate without a telephone. "I told him I was too broke," she said.

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After examination by two psychiatrists Mr Maturana was found to be incompetent for execution by an Arizona judge. He was then sent to a mental hospital to be made competent. That’s right, he was sent off to a hospital to get better so he would be well enough to kill. This is not unheard of here - the youngest person to be executed in the US since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, Charles Rimbaugh, actually tried to kill himself during a competency hearing by rushing at an armed guard. After being shot, Rimbaugh was rushed to the hospital where heroic measures were taken to save his life. Health restored, Rimbaugh got to make history by being executed at 22 years of age.

But the doctors at the Arizona State medical hospital were not crazy about the idea, (OK, bad choice of words). The docs treated Maturana so he was not considered a danger to himself or others but they drew the line at curing him only so he could be executed – they felt that was a breach of their hippocratic oath "to do no harm". One likened it to "fattening a calf for slaughter" After toying with the idea of suing the entire state hospital for contempt of court, Arizona authorities initiated a state wide search to find a doctor, or even a nurse practitioner, willing to "treat" Maturana into the electric chair. State authorities sent 2000 letters to every doctor and nurse practitioner in Arizona. No luck.

The state wide search then turned into a nation wide man hunt … well doctor hunt. Finally, in the entire United States, one doctor was found who was willing to do the job: the medical director of a company that provides mental health care to inmates in Georgia's prisons. Dr Nelson C. Bennet reported that he did not need to treat Mr Maturana. He found the prisoner was seriously ill but he was competent for execution.

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About the Author

Kirsten Edwards is a Fulbright Scholar currently researching and teaching law at an American university. She also works as a volunteer lawyer at a soup kitchen and a domestic violence service and as a law teacher at a juvenile detention centre but all the community service in the world can’t seem to get her a boyfriend.

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