Convicted child molester Joseph Edward Duncan III is getting the attention he craves as he sits in the Kootenai County Jail awaiting trial for the brutal slayings of a Wolf Lodge Bay family.

Duncan’s defense attorneys are trying to overturn Idaho’s 1982 repeal of the insanity defense. Prosecutors are fighting a defense request to delay his April trial by eight months. An old neighbor is writing to him. Women are sending him letters, too, including one who scents her envelopes with perfume. Reporters are trying to interview him. Quotes from his Fifth Nail blog and correspondence thought to be his are making national news.

In other words, a man whose main function in life so far has been to harm others finds himself at center stage. If he claims in a letter that God began talking to him after he kidnapped Shasta and Dylan Groene, his comments are read on the nightly news. If he contends in the same letter that society should be more understanding of sex offenders, journalists dutifully record his outlandish opinion.

Duncan, like others accused of heinous crimes, has a bully pulpit from which to pontificate, make excuses, ask forgiveness and try to humanize himself to a wary public. He’s hard to ignore. People want to know what makes Duncan tick. Most suspect they have enough information to proclaim him guilty now. They’d be wrong to do so. In two months, unless there is a delay, Duncan will be tried for the deaths of Brenda Groene, her 13-year-old son, Slade, and boyfriend, Mark McKenzie. Then, the story will be told in painstaking detail, truth will be separated from rumor, and a Kootenai County jury will decide Duncan’s fate.

That’s the way things are still done in this country, as hard as it is to resist the mob impulse to consider Duncan guilty as charged for the brutal crimes with which he is charged and others with which he’s not. Public defender John Adams should be applauded for searching out all avenues to defend his client. Prosecutor Bill Douglas deserves credit for preparing the best case possible against Duncan. As a result, the whole truth will come out at trial.

Until then, it’s best to approach any communication credited to Duncan with skepticism and the understanding that it’s self-serving. A good example of this is a letter purportedly sent recently from Duncan to Washington’s Citizens for a One Strike Law. No one knows for sure if Duncan wrote it, but the handwriting and signature appear to match the writing on a letter he sent to The Spokesman-Review last fall.

If Duncan wrote it, the homicide suspect claims that God appeared between Shasta Groene and him last summer while he was on the run and told him to “take her home immediately”; that he isn’t crazy; and that society sends a bad message to other sex offenders if it hates and eventually kills him. A psychiatrist could spend considerable time delving into the contents of Duncan’s letter. His defense attorneys are probably pulling their hair out.

Duncan’s alleged correspondence produced an interesting but unimportant sideshow. Soon, he will have the chance to take the stand and defend himself against the state’s claim and Shasta Groene’s testimony that he slaughtered a family to kidnap two children.

Then society can tune him out.