Joseph Edward Duncan III to Represent Himself

A judge in Boise, ID will permit convicted serial killer Joseph Edward Duncan III to act as his own attorney during Duncan's sentencing hearing. Duncan could be sent to death row when all is said and done.

Legally, the judge had to allow it -- psychological evaluations of the killer found him competent to act in his own defense. The judge questioned Duncan about the decision, but the prisoner wouldn't budge.

Duncan sought to dismiss his current representation and act on his own behalf in May. His explanation for doing so? His attorneys could not "ethically represent" his "ideologies."

What kind of "ideologies" could a monster like Duncan possess? He admitted to killing Brenda Groene, her son Slade, and Brenda's boyfriend, Mark McKenzie. Duncan bludgeoned them all to death on the night of May 15/16, 2005, about a month after he absconded from sex offender supervision in Fargo, ND. Duncan was convicted of repeatedly raping and torturing Dylan and Shasta Groene, then killing Dylan.

Duncan's fingerprints match prints from the scene of the murder of a boy named Anthony Martinez in Southern California in 1997. Martinez was abducted and killed while Duncan was a fugitive, having skipped out on probation in Washington State.

Duncan may have killed several other children, including half-sisters Sammiejo White, 11, and Carmen Cubias, age 9. White and Cubias vanished in July of 1996 from Bothell, WA. Duncan lived in the area at the time, and some of his testimony after he was arrested in early July, 2005 seemed to suggest a connection to the little girls.

A sexual predator like Duncan, apparently devoid of any conscience or mercy, might seem to have no "ideology" at all.

But he has a peculiar distinction among killers -- Duncan was an avid blogger. At the time of his arrest in 2005 his blog was big news. It was picked apart on cable news talk shows, even provided the template for a strange, brief documentary about Duncan and his crimes.

While much of what Duncan actually posted in Blogging the Fifth Nail was meaningless, navel-gazing drivel, some of it designed to make him seem as innocuous as possible, he couldn't help but address his pet causes. Like the horrible (in Duncan's view) treatment of sex offenders once they are released back into society. Duncan wrote the following on January 31, 2004. He's talking about someone he called "Captain Mims," a convicted sex offender who had to go back to prison, according to Duncan, because Mims couldn't find anyone willing to rent to him:

I understand why he was willing to go back, because if he does two more years he will be released with no probation and hence will have a much better chance of "making it."

I can tell you from first hand experience that the entire probation and parole system is a farce. People are sent back to prison while on parole for non-criminal offenses that get counted as “recidivism” to drive up the numbers so it looks like almost everyone who gets out goes back. The truth is, if you read the statistics carefully you will notice that the highest recidivism occurs within the first 2 to 3 years after release. Do you think it is a coincidence that that is also the average probation period?

The idiocy of the prison system becomes an ostinato throughout Duncan's blogging, a repeated note he never tires of sounding when the opportunity arises.

Another constant theme is how society perceives people like him. Attached to that is Duncan's own justifications for crimes he committed in the past. Perhaps one of his most telling Fifth Nail posts in this vein was one he titled "The Monsters Among Us." It was published to Duncan's blog on February 17, 2004. Duncan wrote, in part:

I can't count the number of times I've stood open mouthed disbelieving what was happening to me because of something I did not realizing the potential consequences.

Yes, my "sex offense" was one of them. I can't say I did not know it was wrong, but I can honestly say that I had no clue of the impact my actions would have on my victim, or society, or myself. Like I've mentioned before in this blog, I was abused, even raped, so often and by so many different people growing up that I thought it was like smoking pot, everyone did it, but nobody openly admitted it. That was a key issue (faulty perception) that lead up to my offense. I knew it was wrong, like I knew smoking pot was wrong. If I had been arrested and sent to prison for 20 years for possessing a joint I would have been no less dumbfounded by societies reaction to my crime...

Mind you, the crime that saw Duncan put away for 20 years prior to his release from prison in 2000 was the rape and torture of a 14-year-old boy. Duncan was only 17 at the time.

Duncan finished that post with what words that could represent some of his ideology:

If I could leave one mark on this world it would be to help expose the distortions, especially the most common ones forcefully endorsed by our government (like, "criminals are bad," and "sex offenders are monsters").

If psychological profiling were a rabbinical pursuit, Duncan's blogs would present years of parsing to anyone inclined.

Joseph Duncan liked blogging so much that he managed to keep it up in jail. After his arrest, he conscripted a proxy blogger. Duncan wrote his posts in longhand, sent them to his proxy, and they were posted as written to the new site, Blogging the Fifth Nail: Revelations.

Unfettered by any need to seem somewhat sane, a "regular guy," Duncan's few posts for his Revelations revealed both the grandiosity inherent in Duncan's psychopathic narcissism and just maybe, a little more of his so-called ideologies.

A post published in the newer blog on November 13, 2005 was titled, "The Doctor's Hand." In this entry Duncan told the story of a car wreck he had at age 15. After being taken to the ER, Duncan wrote, he awoke while the doctor was cauterizing his wounds to reduce blood loss:

I reflectively [sic] grabbed the doctors hand and pushed it away from my face[. The] doctor retaliated by pulling his hand away and yelling don’t you ever grab the doctors hand while use [sic] working [I realized] that I could have made the injuries to a lot worse by grabbing his hand the way that I did while he was [...] cauterizing the wound.

Duncan continued on to a peculiar conclusion:

When we resist an evil person, we are in effect "grabbing Gods hand" while He is [trying] to help us. Doing so is an indication of our lack of faith in God to protect us and do what is good for us. Just like a doctor, sometimes it is necessary for God to hurt us so we can heal correctly. By resisting an evil person we are interfering with Gods work and more serious injury is the result...

Other posts in Duncan's Revelations blog seem to obsess over issues of, in his words, "love, truth, and life."

But in light of Duncan's successful bid to represent his ideologies when the death penalty is on the table, it's pretty hard to ignore the killer's own conclusions about what represents a "lack of faith in God to protect us and do what is good for us."

A true psychopath like Duncan can't conceive of why the State should kill him for what he's done. Ever in need of control, he wants to represent himself because he believes he will be able to bring the most persuasive and brilliant arguments to bear. Yes, of course he did terrible things -- Duncan will know there can be no denying that -- but he's come around now, and seen what the truth is. In Duncan's mind it will be God's will that he lives, so he may teach others.

Or remain comfortably ensconced in prison bitchhood, a position he clearly enjoyed in the past. Whatever.

Anyway, it won't occur to Duncan that he might just be fighting God's hand all over again. It won't occur to him that fellow serial killer and fellow native of Tacoma, Ted Bundy, tried the same tack, and he failed miserably at it -- and Bundy had legal training.

Those things would require insight, and guys like Jet Duncan don't have much of that.

See, Duncan's real creed might have been posted in his original Fifth Nail blog, after all. On July 2, 2004, Duncan wrote the following:

I have to realize that this is the world I live in and if no one else sees things my way then I must take it into account (not necessarily changing my view, just adapting my behavior a bit to accommodate others views).

What is really interesting about this whole way of looking at things is that a psychologist might call me sociopathic because I am rationalizing the fact that I am insensitive to how others feel. Hmmmmmm, maybe we need more sociopaths then!

Duncan titled that entry "Sociopaths Rock!"

Joseph Edward Duncan III may never have expressed what must be, to him, a more sincere sentiment.

[KTRV Boise]