Man who killed man he believed was a chicken is released

In 2004 Harvey Derrick Glanton mistook Daniel B. Balbaugh for a chicken, and killed him by crushing his skull with a cast-iron pot lid. At trial, Glanton was found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity.

On Tuesday, Chesterfield County Circuit Judge Herbert C. Gill Jr. "set Glanton free from his oversight and the supervision of mental health workers with the Chesterfield County Community Services Board," reports the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

According to evidence presented at his trial, Glanton, then a forklift driver from Atlanta, was convinced he had to get to Washington to warn the government that aliens were taking over the world by converting people to chickens....

At Glanton's 2004 trial, psychologist Evan S. Nelson testified that Glanton believed Balbaugh was a chicken when he encountered Balbaugh outside the victim's mobile home at the James River Marina.

Nelson explained that Glanton lost an eye in a fight about 25 years earlier and developed the delusion that the eye had magical powers that protected him from aliens who were taking over the world by converting people to chickens.