This Doesn't Speak Well of the Knox County DA

This Doesn't Speak Well of the Knox County DA

The problem of mentally ill people--or just emotionally disturbed sorts--confessing to crimes that they didn't do--and often could not have done--isn't new. This story from the July 23, 2008 Knoxville [Tenn.] News gives me no confidence in the ability of the Knox County District Attorney's office to do its job:

Ronald E. Greene had murder on his mind and a confession on his lips when he sat down with a Knoxville Police Department investigator and a tape recorder.
He could not recall with certainty who he killed, when he killed, how he killed or why he killed. He spent more time and offered greater detail in the 22-minute interview describing who he wanted to kill but so far had not: Buster, who drank his liquor; Maurine, who was trying to kill him with nitroglycerine; and David, who blamed Greene for the pneumonia that led to his father's death. He was not, however, trying to kill any prostitutes with a hatchet. He just wanted to scare them straight.
Yes, he confessed, he has to take "a lot of medicine" for mental health woes that had even a veteran KPD investigator worried about the state of Greene's mind.
But none of those red flags stopped the Knox County District Attorney's Office from charging Greene, 40, with second-degree murder in a slaying that had gone unsolved for more than a decade. After all, Greene had confessed.
"I done it, and I'm guilty, and I want to die," Greene insisted in his interview with KPD Sgt. Tim Snoderly.
And Greene knew exactly where the slaying took place. Turns out, though, he forgot to mention one tiny detail that went undiscovered for more than a year: At the time of the slaying, Greene was at a state-run mental health facility hundreds of miles away, sent there with the knowledge of the same district attorney's office that, until last week, insisted Greene was a killer.
It would take defense attorney Steve Sams' examination of court records and the Knox County Justice Information Management System, to which District Attorney General Randy Nichols' staff has access, to prove that Greene could not have beaten Richard Allen Sweat to death underneath the Woodland Avenue viaduct in 1994.

Yup, that seems like a pretty open and shut alibi to me.