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I once represented a mentally ill man on Alabama’s death row named George Daniel. George
had suffered brain damage in a car accident that knocked him unconscious late one night in
Houston, Texas. When he woke up, he was in an upside-down car on the side of the road. He
went home that night and never sought medical assistance. His girlfriend later told his family
that at first he just seemed a little off. Then he started hallucinating and exhibiting
increasingly bizarre and erratic behavior. He stopped sleeping regularly, complained about
hearing voices, and on two occasions ran out of the house naked because he thought he was
being chased by wasps. Within a week of the accident he had stopped speaking in sentences.
Just before his mother, who lived in Montgomery, was summoned to help persuade him to go
to a hospital, George boarded a Greyhound bus in the middle of the night. He traveled as far
as the money he had in his pocket would take him.
Disoriented and uncommunicative, he was forced off the bus in Hurtsboro, Alabama, after
unnerving some passengers by talking loudly to himself and gesturing wildly at objects he
imagined were flying around him. The bus had gone through Montgomery, where he had
family, but he stayed on until he was thrown off, with no money and wearing jeans, a T-shirt,
and no shoes in the middle of January. He wandered around Hurtsboro and eventually
stopped at a house. He knocked on the door, and when the homeowner opened it, George
walked inside without being invited and roamed around until he found the kitchen table,
where he sat down. The alarmed homeowner called her son, who came and physically
removed George from the house. George went to another home owned by an older woman
and did the same thing. She called the police. The officer who responded had a reputation for
being aggressive, and he forcefully removed George from the home. George started resisting
while being pulled to the police car, and the two men began wrestling and fell to the ground.
The officer pulled his weapon and the two were grappling over the gun when it discharged,
shooting the officer in the stomach. He died from the gunshot wound.
George was arrested and charged with capital murder. While in the Russell County jail, he
became acutely psychotic. Officers reported that he wouldn’t leave his cell. He was observed
eating his own feces. His mother visited him, but he didn’t recognize her. He couldn’t speak
in complete sentences. The two lawyers who were appointed to represent him at his capital
trial were primarily concerned that only one of them would be paid the $ 1 , 000 for out-of-
court time that Alabama provided lawyers appointed in capital cases. They began squabbling
with each other, and one filed a civil suit against the other about who could claim the money.
Meanwhile, the judge sent George to Bryce Hospital in Tuscaloosa for a competency
examination. Ed Seger, the doctor who examined George, mysteriously concluded that he was
not mentally ill but was “malingering” or faking symptoms of mental illness.
Based on that evaluation, the judge allowed the capital murder trial to proceed. George’s
lawyers bickered with one another, presented no defense, and called no witnesses. The State
called Dr. Seger, who persuaded the jury that there was nothing mentally wrong with George,
even as he continuously spit in a cup and made loud clucking noises throughout the trial.
George’s family members were distraught. George had been working at a Pier 1 furniture
store in Houston before his car accident. He left town without picking up his check, which
had been ready for collection for over two days before his departure. His mother, a poor
woman who knew the value of a dollar to someone like George, found this behavior more
demonstrative of mental illness than anything else she could point to, and she authorized the