A 39-year-old South Carolina man was acquitted of robbing 15 banks in the last two
months on account of a jury buying his lawyer’s claim that his client had “moral dyslexia”
– a condition which caused the defendant to view questions of right and wrong
“backwards.”
Jerome Shakey, the lawyer for Travis Walleye, explained it thus: “In normal dyslexia,
sufferers read words right to left instead of left to right. Or reverse numbers. My client
has ‘moral dyslexia’ which causes him to see ‘good’ as ‘bad’ and ‘bad’ as ‘good.’”
His eyes welling with tears, Shakey continued. “It’s tragic. When Travis kicks a kitten or
sets fire to a restaurant, he’s convinced he’s doing a good deed. Conversely, he views
helping an old lady across the street as an evil act. It’s a terrible burden to live with.”
Witnesses for the prosecution, including several medical professionals claimed they
never heard of such a condition before and doubted such a thing existed. But upon
cross-examination Shakey got these witnesses to admit that before Sir Isaac Newton,
no one ever heard of “gravity.” That didn’t mean it didn’t exist.
Said Brenda Freed, one of the jurors, about the cross-examination, “That was very
powerful testimony.”
DONATION DRAMA
The most dramatic moment of the trial occurred when Walleye himself took the witness
stand and a young woman in a wheelchair with two small infants holding on behind
suddenly entered the courtroom and wheeled right up to Walleye and asked for a
donation. Walleye handed the woman a ten-dollar bill and then cried out in horror, “Oh,
God! What have I done? I’m a monster!”
“That really sealed the deal,” Shakey told reporters later. When asked if the highly
unusual incident was staged, Shakey smiled and replied, “The jury didn’t think so.”
Still, doubts were raised when the foreman of the jury declared Walleye not guilty because of
“moral dyslexia,” and a disbelieving Travis turned to Shakey and exclaimed,
“I’ve got WHAT now?”
Ironically, after Walleye learned more about his “condition,” his first act was refusing to
pay his lawyer. “My attorney saved my life. He earned his money. But because I have
‘moral dyslexia’ that means that paying him would be EVIL. So I can’t in good
conscience do it.”
Was he stuck in Arkham’s Asylum for the Criminially insane?