The Hard Way

Over the last couple of weeks I have been interviewed by four different psych doctors, two psychiatrists, and two psychologists, three I have seen before, one not, and two I have seen many times over the years since my arrest in July of 2005. They have all been asked to shed their professional opinion on the question of whether or not I was "competent to waive my appeal" back in 2008 when I did so.

I told them all the same thing I've been telling them for the last eight years; my "competency" is the wrong question they should be asking. It has no meaning (according to the so-called legal definition) for me, and would have no meaning to them either if they only understood, which is to say, experienced, what I experienced in 2005 that caused me to bring Shasta home and turned myself in. It is the same thing I have been trying to convey with this blog as well.

I don't expect anyone to accept my word on faith about what happened back then. My only hope is that they will simply question the basic assumptions that are preventing them - preventing all of us - from discovering and experiencing the truth for ourselves.

Today's visitor, a professor and brain researcher from Penn State, asked me to sign a release form allowing him to use my case and information in a study designed to determine if the minds (brains, specifically) are any different in "Capital Case defendants" than other "average" (a research pseudonym for "normal") people.

I agreed to sign the release, but only after taking at least ten minutes to try to explain why the study was asking the wrong question as well (see "Serial Killer Fence" entry). I signed even though I strongly disagree with the direction such studies are trying to go. My rational for this (if you can call it rational at all) is that they must learn for themselves, as I did, the hard way. The easy way is a path that can only be seen in hindsight, but never traversed methinks.