Claire “Buzz” Ball, Jr.

Claire “Buzz” Ball, Jr. was an Athens legislator whose role in William Stanley Milligan’s story was chiefly political. As public criticism of Milligan’s treatment and hospital privileges mounted, Ball challenged the legal framework behind his placement at Athens Mental Health Center and helped advance a proposed restriction on the money offenders could earn from telling their stories.

Identity and Public Role

Ball represented Athens in the Ohio legislature. The book presents Ball alongside fellow legislator Mike Stinziano as a political opponent of the hospital’s handling of Milligan, rather than as a participant in his clinical treatment. Their intervention brought the dispute beyond the hospital and into legislative scrutiny of both the placement statute and the insanity laws.

Hearings and Criticism of the Hospital

As newspapers criticized Milligan’s unsupervised freedom, Ball and Stinziano faulted the hospital and Dr. David Caul. They pressed for hearings to reconsider the statute under which Milligan had been sent to Athens and demanded changes to the laws governing findings of not guilty by reason of insanity. Their campaign put the legal basis for Milligan’s hospital placement under renewed public and political pressure.

House Bill 557

The legislators continued their efforts in response to newspaper coverage. After learning that a book about Milligan was being written, Ball and Stinziano introduced House Bill 557. It proposed preventing offenders—including people found not guilty by reason of insanity—from keeping money earned through stories about their lives or revelations about their crimes. Hearings on the bill were scheduled before the state Judiciary Committee for two months later; the account does not establish the bill’s eventual fate.

Narrative Significance

Ball’s actions show how coverage of Milligan’s case could generate consequences beyond the hospital: reports about his leave privileges and earnings helped spur demands for hearings and a proposed change in state law. The resulting controversy concerned not only where Milligan should receive treatment, but also whether a person in his legal position should be able to profit from telling his story.