The Voices Told Him to Kill

By JAMES WILLWERTH/POTOSI

Bobby Shaw cannot remember when the voices started talking to him. Growing up in impoverished, rural Missouri, he had always been an odd boy, slow yet sometimes excitable, likable but strange. Bobby often wandered into the homes of others; he would sit in their living rooms, as if he lived there, until his father came and got him -- and punished him. "I thought if I whupped him, he would think harder the next time," Bobby's father David told a social worker. Bobby's sister Martha, two years his junior, helped him through first grade after he flunked it twice. "He just wasn't very bright," she says. "If the teacher said, 'Recess is over; sit down,' I'd have to go over, take his hand and tell him to sit down." She adds, "We were very close." As a teenager, he loved to dance "fast and slow," says Martha. "He'd laugh a lot, but -- I can't explain it -- then he'd stop himself and say, 'Oh, boy.' He'd make a comment behind the laugh, and then he'd be quiet again."

It was not until Bobby came home from prison the first time that his behavior became more than odd. "He wasn't the same person," says his mother Ruby. He wouldn't stay in his room at night. "He'd pack all his clothes and his shoes in a paper bag and walk out. I'd ask, 'Where you goin'?' He'd say, 'I don't know where I'm goin'. I got to get away from those people in my room.' I'd say, 'Child, nobody is talkin' to you in your room. You've just been around too many people in jail.' I would sit in the cool of the evenin' with him and he'd say, 'I don't like to be around all those people!' " He would then sit on the back porch all night, rocking and pouring water over his head, talking to himself.

Family and friends in St. Louis, Missouri, where the Shaws had moved, decided that Bobby needed time to adjust. Martha's common-law husband Calvin Morris decided to "bring Bobby along." "They were good friends," says Martha. Morris bought Bobby clothes and took care of him. But on Sept. 17, 1975, Bobby Shaw shot and killed Calvin Morris with a 20-gauge shotgun. Rushing to the scene, Bobby's older brother Vancell asked him what had happened. "I don't know," Bobby said. And then he asked Vancell for cigarettes.

"What made him do that to somebody I know was his best friend?" Martha asks tearfully. "He's never said anything about it for 18 years. I don't know if he even remembers what happened." Last December, Bobby finally offered some kind of an explanation. "Voices already picked him ((Morris)) a murderer," he told a neurologist. "They picked me. I don't know why. They picked me and said I had to do it."

Bobby Shaw, 42, is a prisoner at Missouri's Potosi Correctional Center. When questioned about his life, he parrots courtroom legalese: "Read the record . . . I have no comment." When a photographer asks to "take" his picture, he replies in all seriousness, "I don't have one." On June 9, at one minute past midnight, unless he receives executive clemency, he will die by lethal injection.

The story of Bobby Shaw's life makes some people cry. At his recent competency hearing, the court stenographer had to stop several times to compose herself. But guilt or innocence is not in dispute here. Nobody argues that Bobby Shaw did not kill Calvin Morris. No one suggests that he did not then fatally stab prison guard Walter Farrow while doing time. For many who have followed the case, anger rises from the story of his journey through America's justice and social-welfare system. For Bobby Shaw has never been able to raise the defense of insanity, even though he has probably been brain- damaged or schizophrenic most of his life.

"The system has failed Bobby in just about every way possible," says Sean O'Brien, Shaw's pro bono lawyer and the director of the nonprofit Missouri Capital Punishment Resource Center. Notes Dr. Jonathan Pincus, chairman of Georgetown University's neurology department: "The greatest tragedy in this case is that he has a treatable disorder. If he had been diagnosed and treated properly, two victims would probably be alive, and he would not be on death row."

The condemned man's mother weeps. "Sometimes I cry by myself at home when I think about it," says Ruby Shaw, 68. "I always wonder, What did I do to him? I wonder if he thinks I caused this. Have you ever tried to tell yourself you was all right when you know you wasn't? I do that lots of times." Ruby grasps for an explanation: "During the time I was carrying Bobby, I had an upset thing. I think it fell on him." For months she could not recognize her children or care for them.

Whatever blame his mother may wish to take, Bobby Shaw's troubles became evident after he was sentenced to four years in prison for holding up a liquor & store. Says Ruby: "He and his friends were just playin'. He didn't have no gun or knife. He knew the woman who owned the store, and he said, 'Gimme some liquor!' She understood. She didn't even call the police. But somebody else did, and the State of Missouri just took over." At the age of 23, Bobby was sent to the corrections center in Moberly, Missouri. His life would never be the same.

On June 22, 1974, Bobby's prison records report, "This inmate grabbed another inmate and sucked his right breast." Shaw received a disciplinary warning, but the incident caused so much commotion among the prison population that Shaw was transferred. The following August, he got into a fight with another inmate, then sidestepped a guard who tried to intervene and attacked the inmate again. The prison administration apparently found Shaw's behavior bizarre enough to call in a psychiatrist. First Bobby was given Valium. A month later, he began taking Mellaril, an antipsychotic drug often used to stabilize schizophrenia patients. In December 1974, an inmate hit him on the head with a pipe. He was severely injured.

But Bobby Shaw was never formally diagnosed with schizophrenia. Furthermore, when he was paroled in February 1975, the corrections department did not tell his family he had been on antipsychotic drugs for six months. Ideally, a mentally ill inmate coming out of prison would have community-based treatment penciled in as one of his parole requirements. Not Bobby. "They never told us he was hit on the head," says Martha. "They never told us he was on medication. They never told us anything.

"A lot of guys come home and have to adjust to the street again," says Martha. "We thought that was the problem. But he was doing strange things. We were in the kitchen one day, and I was telling him he had to make his adjustment and start looking for a job. He started throwing water on me from the sink. Me and Bobby was too close for him to treat me that way."

And then one morning he killed Martha's husband.

DO NOT LOOK FOR BALANCE IN THE TRANscript of Bobby Shaw's first murder trial. Against 86 pages of testimony listed under the heading "State's Evidence" is a single page of defense material -- a standard motion for acquittal on the grounds that the state had not proved its case. Bobby was so uncommunicative that his public defender, Joseph Warzycki, complained about it in open court. "Your honor," said the lawyer, "I would like the record to indicate at this time that . . . Mr. Shaw has not seen fit to decide to make any statement to me regarding the circumstances of the case." The jury found him guilty of first-degree murder. On March 21, 1977, Bobby was sentenced to life imprisonment at Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City.

In spite of his previous record in jail and his history of sudden, violent behavior, prison officials assigned Bobby Shaw to the vegetable-cutting room, where inmates work with knives every day. He was neither examined nor treated for psychiatric illness. There Shaw was put under the direction of guard Walter Farrow, 61, who seemed to get along well with his prisoner. Bobby Shaw remembers his assignment with some excitement. "I was peelin' potatoes. I was runnin' the machine, makin' French fries, scalloped potatoes. Corn had to be snatched off the cob. Lettuce and cabbage had to be cut." He remembers nothing else.

But Bobby was again having psychotic episodes. On Aug. 8, 1977, Shaw was found standing naked at his cell door at 1:37 p.m. when he was supposed to report for work. He got into fights with other inmates. In early 1978 he alarmed his fellow kitchen employees by attacking a sack of potatoes with a cutting knife. Farrow and others asked for Bobby to be transferred to a less dangerous job. He was not.

AT 7:30 A.M. ON JULY 16, 1978, FARROW BEgan his day as usual, unlocking the cabinet containing the knives. Without warning, Bobby reached past him, grabbing two knives. "No, Shaw, no!" Farrow yelled. Bobby Shaw stabbed him in the chest and ran into the hallway. Farrow chased him, then collapsed and died. Shaw was subdued and badly beaten. "I saw him the next day in the hospital ward," says Ruby. "His head was so big. It was twice the size of a normal head, like a watermelon." Only last December did Shaw offer a version of what happened. It was the voices, two or three kinds talking, male and female. "The voices were very active," he admitted. "They said, 'Stick the guard and walk out.' "

At Shaw's second murder trial, Jefferson City public defender Howard McFadden asked for a psychiatric evaluation. Reported Dr. Sadashiv Parwatikar: "Mr. Shaw is a mildly depressed individual . . . There is no evidence of any psychotic disorder." In another report, he added, "Various members of the ((prison)) staff indicate that Mr. Shaw never caused any administrative problems . . . ((His previous history)) does not show any significant abnormalities." Parwatikar, a state employee, noted, however, that Bobby's IQ was "borderline."

The trial judge concluded that Shaw was mentally functional and refused to instruct the jury that they could take mental retardation into account when deciding their verdict. The jury found him guilty. The defense then asked that the court not "sully" its hands with a death sentence for this "flotsam on the sea of life." The judge sentenced Bobby Shaw to death.

In 1991 Parwatikar admitted that he had misdiagnosed Shaw. He blamed the prison authorities for not providing him with all Bobby's records. He told TIME, "Schizophrenics don't generally like to admit to some of the things going on underneath. I asked him if he was having command hallucinations, and he denied it." He added, "I missed the diagnosis . . . given what I had."

True schizophrenia patients often hide their symptoms and insist that nothing unusual is happening. It takes skill to identify some kinds of insanity. Last December, Shaw's pro bono lawyer Sean O'Brien brought in Georgetown neurologist Jonathan Pincus to interview Bobby.

"Do you have hallucinations?" asked Pincus.

"No," said Shaw.

"Do you hear things that aren't there?"

"No."

Pincus, talking in a gentle, take-your-time manner, shifted to other questions. Then he asked, "Do you hear things that are there, but other people don't hear?"

"Well . . . yeah," said Shaw.

Schizophrenia is a genetically influenced mental illness involving hallucinations, delusions, depression and disorderly thinking. No one knows what causes it, but the pathology involves misfiring neurotransmissions originating in the brain's limbic system, where movement and thought are first processed, then sent to the frontal lobes, where decision-making begins. Patients commonly imagine that people on television and in magazines are talking to them directly and personally. They become antisocial and depressed and hear aggressive voices that can sometimes command them to commit suicide -- or, on rare occasions, to kill someone. Pincus is convinced that homicidal violence only occurs when child abuse and brain damage are also part of the picture.

Pincus is so convinced that Bobby was abused as a child that he has said so in testimony. When he did, Ruby Shaw got up and left the courtroom. She later told him, "I know you had to say all that, but I just couldn't stand reliving those terrible times." Says Pincus: "I believe he was abused -- beaten and burned." As for brain damage, tests administered in 1990 indicate that Shaw's right parietal lobe is damaged. That is the area of the brain that controls how we interpret the behavior of others. Shaw's frontal lobes are also atrophied.

Two weeks ago, TIME spoke to Bobby Shaw about his voices.

Do you hear voices?

"I ain't heard none in quite a while."

What do they say?

"I can't hardly make it out."

Can you talk about your voices?

"I have heard voices, but I can't make out much what they're saying. Lot of noise, lot of talking, lot of everything. Sometimes I might wake up and think I hear something, but I don't know."

How many voices do you hear?

"I don't know. Maybe six to 12."

Do they give you commands?

"No, not directly to me. They don't give you commands. They just, like, talk in commands."

Do you talk back at them?

"No, it's too easy to slip and get hurt. I might not pay attention to where I'm going."

As he awaited execution in the mid-'80s, Bobby Shaw's condition deteriorated. He became withdrawn and disheveled -- and the prison system finally took notice. In September 1986 a new department of corrections report announced that Shaw had a "schizoid personality disorder." But it was all too late.

The prisoner's legal appeals were being quickly exhausted. Court after court had turned him down, and his first "serious" execution warrant was issued for May 1, 1990. In an effort to save Shaw, Donald Wolff, a prominent St. Louis attorney assigned to the case, brought in Illinois psychologist Daniel Cuneo, a political conservative usually extremely demanding on fitness matters, to determine whether Bobby was "competent" to be executed. Competency demands that a man understand why he was sentenced to die and what will happen when he is executed. Cuneo asked Shaw if he expected to be alive a week after his execution. "Might be here next week," Shaw replied. The psychologist reported, "Shaw's defect clearly renders him unable to understand matters." For the first time, Cuneo testified that a condemned man was not "fit" for capital punishment. Cuneo adds, "Execution doesn't mean anything to Bobby Shaw. He doesn't know what's going to happen."

But the fresh discoveries of schizophrenia and mental incompetency were all for naught. Further appeals were dismissed on procedural grounds after the U.S. Supreme Court in 1985 began a series of rulings limiting the introduction of new evidence into cases already under appeal. Says O'Brien: "Bobby's death sentence is the product of a complete breakdown of the adversary system. The true defense in this case has never been inside a courtroom, and it never will be." In the eyes of the law, Bobby Shaw has been and always will be a normal, functioning citizen -- and fit for execution.

Martha Shaw was studying to become a nurse when Calvin Morris was killed. She could never bring herself to finish. "I just can't handle that kind of pressure. It's killing me. My son's daddy is dead. He needed his daddy." She was so angry at Bobby that "for a long time I wouldn't speak to him." Then the second murder occurred. "I began to realize he was sick. I've blamed myself all these years." She does not want to see him die. "Bobby will never have a wife and family. He will never be able to enjoy life. The system took a sick person away and made him worse."

Janet Halderman is Walter Farrow's daughter. Her family was devastated by his murder. "It took me 18 months after my dad died to get up my confidence to walk into a dark room," she says. She believes that Bobby Shaw is a victim of society but that the execution has to be carried out. "Somewhere the system has made a mistake," she says. "If Mr. Shaw was in prison, the system should have known that he was mentally ill. If he was so mentally ill, he shouldn't have been allowed to work in a vegetable-cutting room with butcher knives. He has this voice that says, 'Kill this person.' I'm sorry for his condition. But what is the point of dragging this out? I can't say I'm pro capital punishment. I can't say I'm against it. But if I did the crime and someone sentenced me to death, that's what needs to be done. It doesn't make any difference what color you are, how much money you have, or what your mental condition is."

On June 9, at a minute past midnight, barring clemency by Missouri Governor Mel Carnahan, Bobby Lewis Shaw will die. He has never asked for clemency. He never asked for lawyers to appeal his case. Talking to TIME, he answered questions about his fate laconically, at times pulling his gray-flecked hair, at times staring at the ceiling and thinking hard for a reply.

Do you think you've gotten a fair shake in life?

"I don't know. I probably thought about it when I was younger."

% How do you feel about being executed?

"I'm aware that I have to be executed. It ain't something that you wipe off your mind."

What does it mean?

"I don't know."

You don't know?

"When you're dead, you're dead. That's all."

How do you feel about being dead?

"Dead covers a lot of territory."

If the Governor were here, what would you say to him?

"I never gave it much thought. I'd say, 'Read the report.' "

Where do you think you'll be on June 9?

"Dead."