4A COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL MARCH 21, 2018
O PINION
Offbeat Oregon History: A 515-day case for insanity
By Finn JD John
For The Sentinel
C
harles Fiester really, really didn’t want
to die.
Fair enough; most of us don’t. His
wife, Nancy, hadn’t wanted to die either; but
she’d been trying to leave their 30-year marriage
and had taken up with another man, a Mr. Mudd.
And, well, one thing had led to another and the
next thing anyone knew Fiester was dragging her
by the hair to a mud puddle and drowning her in
it, while their three youngest children looked on
in horror.
As a result, on Sept. 30, 1895, he found himself
facing a jury in a Josephine County court. And
those jurors weren’t turning out to be particularly
favorably disposed toward him.
His attorney had pleaded not guilty by reason
of insanity. The problem for Fi-
ester was, this was a few years
before the great deluge of “tem-
porary insanity” pleas in “un-
written law” murders, and insan-
ity pleas were still very hard to
pull off. For a man who’s never
shown much history of insanity,
it was a near-impossibility.
Fiester did have a history of
something else, though, some-
thing kind of like insanity — but
it was something that wasn’t
helping at all with his case: an
anger problem.
He and Nancy had been mar-
ried 30 years before, when he
was around 22 and she a mid-
dle-school-age waif of 12 or 13.
Since that time, she’d borne him
10 children, who now ranged in
age from 6 to 28. Coworkers and
acquaintances knew Fiester as a
soft-spoken, stoop-shouldered
man with a reputation for being
a reliable, hard worker, a former offi cer with the
Salem Police Department in the early years before
he moved with his family to Kerby and Merlin.
But close neighbors knew better. And the pros-
ecution had talked to those neighbors, and now
they were appearing in court testifying to all the
times Nancy had turned up at their houses with
bruises and injuries and other evidence of his vi-
olent temper.
Then, too, the Fiester family was still a little
notorious after the events of the previous year,
when a Lebanon man had been shot in a fi ght over
Fiester’s 21-year-old daughter Jessie “Jet” Black.
Jet and her husband, Sam Black, were separated,
and apparently Jet Black was seeing a little too
much of a man named Jesse Rice for Sam’s taste.
On the evening of Oct. 3, 1893, Sam unexpect-
edly showed up at his estranged wife’s residence
and, fi nding Jesse Rice there, shot him dead.
Two love triangles turned deadly, in the same
family, within the space of a year. Sheer coinci-
dence, of course; but it wasn’t a good look.
Finally, the lawyers wrapped up their closing
statements, and the jury took just 40 minutes com-
ing to a verdict: Guilty of fi rst-degree murder.
Fiester wasn’t too worried at fi rst. He seemed
pretty sure that he would be able to get the Su-
preme Court to overturn the conviction or com-
mute it into a prison sentence.
Sure enough, a few days before his scheduled
execution date, the Supreme Court issued a stay
of execution to buy it a little time to review his
claim of insanity. And it was just after this that
Fiester abruptly went into a catatonic state. He lay
there on his bunk, neither speaking nor respond-
ing to anyone around him, staring straight at the
ceiling, all day. And all the next day. And the next.
The psychologist sent in by the court pro-
claimed him insane. That being the case, of
course, he could hardly be executed.
But for some reason — maybe somebody
smelled a rat? — the court never got around to de-
claring him not guilty on that basis. He just stayed
there, in the Josephine County jail. Deputies had
to feed him, presumably some sort of liquid diet.
Deputies also had to help him with other person-
al-care matters. It’s not clear how they did this,
since they didn’t share the details with the news-
papers; but most likely it involved some form of
diaper that had to be changed several times a day,
as with a baby.
A year slipped by, and most of another one. The
sheriff tried at least once to get rid of the huge,
bearded baby in his jailhouse; but his requests to
get Fiester transferred to the Oregon State Hos-
pital (then called the Oregon Insane Asylum)
went nowhere. Most likely Fiester’s lawyer’s
well-meaning attempts to keep his client out of
court were the source of the trouble.
In any case, 515 days went by with Fiester ap-
parently catatonic. Then, on May 10, 1897, two of
Fiester’s sons, 26-year-old William and 18-year-
old John, were caught burgling a smokehouse to
steal bacon, and lodged in the jail with their “cata-
tonic” father. William was set up in the room with
his father, and several other jail occupants heard
them whispering together, late in the night.
The next morning, the deputy in charge of
feeding Fiester walked in with a plate of food and
set it down on the table next to him.
“You can eat that, or let it alone,” he told Fi-
ester. “I will never feed you again.”
He walked out. And upon his return an hour or
so later, the plate was empty.
“Old man, you have played your game well,”
the deputy told Fiester.
“Yes,” said Fiester — the fi rst words he’d spo-
ken out loud in nearly two years — “but it has
been hard.”
Fiester’s insanity having been exposed as a
ruse, his case was reactivated, and a few months
later, on April 21, 1898, he was once again sen-
tenced to hang, the event scheduled to take place
on June 10.
On the appointed morning, Sheriff Joseph G.
Hiatt found Fiester once again lying on his cot as
if dead. He could not be roused; his eyes rolled
back in his head, and he seemed to be having trou-
ble breathing. His gasping and rattling sounded so
believable that the sheriff postponed the hanging,
hoping that he’d die of his own accord before too
long and no one would have to burden his con-
science with the serving of a death sentence upon
him.
But by 1 p.m., nothing had changed, so the
sheriff had the still-unresponsive Fiester strapped
to a board and hauled to the gallows, where —
still unresponsive, and apparently unconscious —
he was hanged without incident.
It may have been the only time in Oregon his-
tory that an unconscious man was hanged. But,
of course, that only goes if he really was uncon-
scious. After his 515-day charade, the sheriff
didn’t believe he really was, and apparently nei-
ther did anyone else.
Dr. Joel Fuhrman: Soups, essential for high-nutrient diet
Soups, along with salads, are an essential part of a high-nutrient (Nu-
tritarian) diet, and for good reason. Vegetable and bean soups and stews
are nutrient-rich, fl avorful and easy to prepare. They can be served as
a complement to a meal or as the centerpiece. Soups can easily be
cooked in bulk to provide several days’ worth of leftovers, convenient
to have on hand at home or to take along to work or school. Soups and
stews are warming, satisfying and satiating and can widen your nutri-
ent diversity. They can be made from a variety of fresh, frozen or even
leftover ingredients and allow for experimentation in a pot, pressure
cooker, slow cooker or even right in a Vitamix or other high-powered
blender.
Since soups are gently cooked with a liquid base, nutrients are re-
tained and some are made more absorbable. Many nutrients, like nia-
cin, folate and a range of minerals, are water soluble. Normally, with
water-based cooking, like boiling, water-soluble nutrients are leached
into the cooking water and discarded. However, with soups, the liquid
and the water-soluble nutrients are retained and consumed.
Cooking soup heats, moisturizes and softens vegetables and beans,
which dramatically increases the potential digestibility and absorption
of the nutritious compounds contained within them. Recent studies
confi rm that the body absorbs more of the benefi cial anti-cancer com-
pounds, carotenoids in particular, especially lutein and lycopene, from
cooked vegetables as compared to raw vegetables. Scientists speculate
that the increase in absorption of these antioxidants after cooking may
be attributed to the destruction of the cell matrix or connective bands to
which these compounds are bound.
Additionally, cooking vegetables in soups breaks down the cellulose
within them and alters the plants’ cell structures, which facilitates di-
gestion. This way of cooking also prevents foods from browning and
forming toxic compounds, like acrylamide, which is formed in dry,
high-temperature cooking, like baking, frying and grilling, and is a po-
tential carcinogen or cancer-causing agent.
Start your soups with a base of water and fresh vegetable juice, like
carrot, celery or tomato juice or a no-salt-added vegetable broth, with
less than 200 mg of sodium per cup. Next, add some dry beans, as they
take the longest to cook. Then, add some onions, leeks or other mem-
bers of the Allium family, leafy green vegetables, other vegetables that
you have on hand, and some herbs, spices or fruits like parsley, black
pepper or lemon.
Be sure to include some cruciferous vegetables into the mix, such
as kale, bok choy or cabbage. Chop or blend most of the vegetables
before adding them to the pot to form organosulfur compounds in the
onions and isothiocyanates (ITCs) in the cruciferous vegetables, which
are very important disease-fi ghting phytochemicals.
To make a creamier soup and add another layer of fl avor blend some
nuts into the soup. Cook a large pot of soup at least once a week and
store leftovers in individual containers, in the refrigerator for fi ve days
or longer in the freezer. Be wary of commercially available canned
soups, as they are often high in sodium.
Quick, hot, tasty and nutrient dense—soups in all of their vari-
eties are a great way to experience the pleasures of the Nutritarian
diet.
*This column fi rst appeared in the March 25, 2015 edition of The
Sentinel
C ottage G rove
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IN BRIEF MARCH 21-MARCH 30
"Swing the Bridge" a benefi t to raise awareness and funds
for the repair of the Swinging Bridge will be held at the armory
on March, 24 from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. Live bands. Tickets $10 at
the Book Mine but no one turned away for lack of funds. For
more information, contact (541) 942-7037.
Science Pub (free) beginning at 5 p.m. at the Axe and Fiddle
on Main St. on Tuesday, March 27.
Umpqua Community College Board of Education meeting
to be held today, March 21 at 4:30 p.m. in ESB 15.
Have an event, lecture, fundraiser or class you want the
community to know about? Send details to cmay@cgsentinel.
com to be featured in this space.