Sometimes it’s easy to tell when you’re dealing with someone that’s two complete suits shy of a full deck and harmless, despite threats.

That was the apparent judgment call made by a California bank manager who, after stalling, handed a robber just $250 although his note said he had a gun, and a bomb, and wanted $20,000 in large bills.

The banker got it right. Linroy Bottoson owned a gun, but if he remembered to bring it to the bank, he forgot to show it. He robbed the bank because God told him to. Bottoson was a diagnosed schizophrenic with suicidal and self-destructive tendencies, but not violent ones.

Former FBI Agent John Loughney’s testimony about the robbery conviction was used at Bottoson’s homicide trial as if he’d shown both a gun and a bomb and received $20,000 in large bills instead of $250 in small ones.

Florida executed Bottoson after a trial and appeals more typical of Brevard County than Orange.

Select Florida physicians declared Bottoson competent. Phony expert John Preston provided “scent evidence” testimony, as in the upset Brevard convictions of Juan Ramos, Wilton Dedge and Bill Dillon. Jailhouse informant Pertrell Kuniara swore falsely, too, just as James E. Gilmore testified against Ramos, Clarence Zacke testified against Dedge and Roger Dale Chapman testified against Dillon.

Kuniara recanted, saying he’d discussed church with Bottoson, not murder. And Preston’s been repeatedly discredited, including during Bottoson’s trial, which our Supreme Court Justices just can’t ever rightly remember.

My intuition – not voices – tells me that the crushing of the victim’s body was post mortem; occurring when Ernest showed Bottoson where the body was after Ernest returned the car he borrowed. Others’ intuitions perhaps agreed, making a requested exhumation unwise.

Knowing danger when he sees it, the California banker will likely never visit Florida.