Murderer says he’s not crazy as board weighs clemency
VARNER — Jack Gordon Greene, a condemned murderer housed in the prison system’s Supermax Unit near Varner, said Wednesday that he wants the world to know he is not crazy.
Seated next to him at a hearing inside the prison were his court-appointed attorneys, who in a bid to cancel Greene’s upcoming execution argued that the inmate has lost his grip on reality and that his mind is plagued with the delusion that he is suffering near-constant pain.
The conflicting testimonies played out Wednesday in front of the Arkansas Parole Board, which is weighing a pair of clemency applications for Greene ahead of his scheduled Nov. 9 execution.
Greene, 62, was sentenced to die for killing Sidney Burnett, a retired Johnson County minister, in 1991, while on the lam after killing his brother in North Carolina. Greene
said Wednesday that he accepted responsibility for both murders.
The Parole Board is expected to release its recommendation within 72 hours. The final decision on whether to grant Greene mercy is up to the governor.
The first application, handwritten by Greene, alleges his own attorneys are conspiring with prison officials to have Greene declared insane.
Greene told the Parole Board he wants his sentence commuted to life only if the state will abide by an earlier agreement to extradite him to his home state of North Carolina. Otherwise, he said, he prefers death.
The second application, submitted by Greene’s federal court-appointed attorneys, argues that Greene is unfit to be executed because psychosomatic delusions prevent him from understanding the reality of his punishment.
The effect of those delusions, defense psychologist Dale Watson said, was visible to the Parole Board on Wednesday: Greene arrived in a wheelchair, but stood hunched through most of the two-hour meeting. His hands, cuffed and shackled to his ankles, shook as he rummaged through papers. He was panting and at times shoved a ribbon of tissue into his left ear, which he left dangling throughout the hearing.
Interrupting Watson and his own attorneys several times, Greene objected to having a “nut doctor” testify on his behalf. Greene said his pain is real and that his behavior is the result of years of having the food slot on
During the more than two decades Greene has spent in a maximum security prison, their family, especially their mother, has been fearful he will find a way to escape and harm them, the daughters said.
his cell door slammed loudly, bursting his eardrum and damaging his nerves.
After listening to Greene and his attorneys at the Varner Unit, the Parole Board traveled to Little Rock to hear a rebuttal from prosecutors and Burnett’s family. They described Greene as a manipulator long before he arrived in prison.
“He has had 26 years to perfect his performance,” said Carolin Walker, a daughter of Burnett’s. She and two sisters spoke at the hearing in Little Rock. “That’s what he does — he is an actor, he performs.”
An assistant attorney general who presented the case to the Parole Board argued that the panel should not consider the clemency bid filed by Greene’s attorneys because the prisoner refused to sign it.
Prosecuting Attorney David Gibbons described to the Parole Board what he said was the most “horrendous” murder he ever tried: Greene bound and gagged Burnett, beat him so hard with a can of hominy that it dented the metal, cut his face and finally shot him to death with a .25-caliber pistol.
That was several years after Sidney Burnett and his wife, Edna, took in Greene and his former girlfriend, housing them and supplying Greene with work, Gibbons said.
After Edna Burnett helped Greene’s former girlfriend escape his abuse, Burnett’s daughters recalled, Greene became spiteful and made a list of people he intended to kill.
During the more than two decades Greene has spent in a maximum security prison, their family, especially their mother, has been fearful he will find a way to escape and harm them, the daughters said.
After Greene was sentenced to life in prison for killing his brother Tommy, North Carolina agreed in 1992 to send Greene to Arkansas to face a capital-murder charge on the condition that he be sent back if the prosecution resulted in anything other than a death sentence. The agreement was signed by then-Gov. Bill Clinton.
It’s unclear if commuting Greene’s death sentence now would require he be sent back to North Carolina, where his life sentence has since been overturned on appeal. A spokesman for Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge said it would be up to North Carolina.
Greene said he wants to spend the rest of his life in a North Carolina prison because he believes he will receive better medical treatment there.
Sidney Burnett’s daughter, Irene Burton, said she suspected a different rationale.
“Jack is doing this because he fears death,” Burton said. “Just knowing that [the execution] could not happen is just torture.”