Alan Matheney
Matheney attorney Carol Heise, explained her client is delusional and psychotic, urged the board still to consider clemency.
"It's a matter of life and death, and you're the chairman of the board," she told Rizzo. "There's a mentally ill prisoner here."
Rizzo replied: "We can't conduct a hearing without that prisoner. That's that."
The decedent's father, Eugene Bianco, who attended the hearing, explained that Matheney's refusal to testify was an attempt to manipulate the system. "He's not mentally ill," said Bianco who has no formal psychiatric training but does visit his daughter's grave every week. "It's just the way he is."
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1 comment:
Blogger wouldn't let me post this comment at the previous post on Mr. Pro Se in King County, but it and Death Row Inmate Skips are both about mental illness in my opinion. Anecdotally, the only people i've met who fire their PDs are non-bondable defendants in jail with untreated or under-treated mental illness. The infuriating irony is they've already been found competent, but if you talk to the fired PDs, they're screaming about how "crazy" the client is. The judge sits up there admonishing the defendant, but won't wake up to the reality.
In the case of the decedent's father's denial of mental illness, it's sadly typical in these cases. Acknowledging any mitigating factor is misperceived as "making excuses" or "letting the defendant off."
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