100 years ago in Spokane: Defendent falls asleep at his murder trial

From our archives, 100 years ago

Alfonzo Pansieri fell asleep at his own trial for murdering a millinery store owner. The judge ordered the court clerk to try to keep Pansieri awake.

This seemed to corroborate some of the testimony about the odd behavior of Pansieri, whose own attorney called him a “simpleton.” One Potlatch man testified that Pansieri went out and bought five roosters after some “jocular friends” suggested that he should do so as an alarm clock in order to get to work on time at the Potlatch sawmill.

This testimony was later stricken as hearsay. However, plenty of other testimony detailed his eccentricities. Corrina Gasparetti, described as “buxom and dark-eyed,” said Pansieri asked her to marry him “a hundred or two hundred times.”

She said she replied, “I don’t want to marry a crazy man like you.”

A doctor testified for the defense that, in his opinion, Pansieri was a “congenital defective.” His attorney was mounting an insanity defense.

There was no explanation for why The Spokesman-Review suddenly changed the spelling of the defendant’s name from Panziero to Pansieri, although we might speculate that the reporter finally saw the correct spelling on court documents.

From the accident beat: Clarissa Webb, 11, was watching a pretend “movie show” staged by other kids, when Theodore Gage, 13, approached and fired a stone from a slingshot. It hit Clarissa in the eye, blinding her in that eye permanently.

Juvenile authorities said they planned to declare the boy a juvenile dependent and possibly send him to an institution.