Lawyers for Mentally Ill Oklahoma Death-Row Prisoner Seek Clemency, Competency Trial

Legal professionals for Oklahoma death-row prisoner Benjamin Cole
have filed a petition with the Oklahoma Board of Pardons and Parole asking the Board to suggest to Governor Kevin Stitt that Cole’s sentence be commuted to life with out parole.

The petition, submitted to the board on September 16, 2022, states that “Benjamin Cole right this moment is a frail, 57-year-old man with a broken and deteriorating mind, affected by progressive and extreme psychological sickness who poses no menace to anybody in any method.” Cole, who faces an October 20, 2022 execution date, is the third of 25 death-row prisoners Oklahoma has scheduled to place demise between August 2022 and December 2024, in an execution spree with out parallel within the state’s historical past.

Cole, whom the petition describes as “wheelchair sure” and “catatonic,” suffers from a mixture of mind harm ensuing from a number of childhood and early maturity head traumas and a household historical past of psychological sickness exacerbated by repeated bodily and sexual abuse as a toddler that additionally led to persistent alcohol and drug abuse. Medical imaging, the petition says, exhibits that Cole has “a large, observable … lesion” in an space of the mind related to paranoid schizophrenia, and in addition reveals signs of Parkinson’s Illness.

Thomas Hird, one of many federal defenders representing Cole, mentioned in an announcement accompanying the clemency submitting that Cole’s extreme psychological sickness and mind harm “depart him with no rational understanding of why the State seeks to execute him.” Cole’s psychological well being “has deteriorated dramatically over his years in solitary confinement, and he’s now so bodily compromised that he can barely transfer,” Hird mentioned. “He isn’t a menace to anybody, and his execution can be each unconstitutional and unconscionable.”

Cole’s legal professionals even have filed a petition in a Pittsburg County courtroom — the place Oklahoma’s demise row is situated — searching for a jury trial on his competency to be executed. The courtroom is anticipated to problem a ruling on that petition on September 30. Cole’s clemency listening to is scheduled for September 27.

In an interview with Fox Oklahoma Metropolis affiliate KOKH, Brett Farley, chair of Oklahoma Conservatives Involved In regards to the Loss of life Penalty, mentioned “When you might have demise row inmates which have severe psychological competency questions at any level within the course of, … it behooves us to take a step again and query what we’re doing right here.” “We can’t be a state that…values the sanctity of life, and, on the identical time, assume that we are able to have a system of justice that resorts to demise,” Farley, the previous director of communications for the Oklahoma Republican Get together, mentioned.

Cole was convicted and sentenced to demise in Rogers County, Oklahoma for killing his nine-month-old daughter, Brianna, in December 2002. He admitted to police that he was liable for her demise. Prosecutors repeatedly provided him a plea deal for a life sentence, which he every time declined based mostly upon what his legal professionals describe as spiritual delusions. Going to trial, Cole reportedly advised them, “was God’s will” and “would permit God to the touch hearts.”

Cole’s trial decide ordered psychological well being competency evaluations in 2003 and 2004, however after a jury trial in September 2004 below Oklahoma’s distinctive competency-determination procedures, Cole was dominated competent to be tried. He was sentenced to demise later that yr.

The clemency petition particulars Cole’s upbringing by a household with a multi-generational historical past of psychological sickness and in a family replete with drug and alcohol dependancy and bodily and sexual abuse. It supplies proof that Cole started exhibiting signs of schizophrenia in his early twenties and was formally recognized with schizophrenia in 2008. A number of affidavits by psychologist Dr. David George Hough, who first examined Cole in 2016, present particulars of a severe “closed head damage” Cole suffered at age 20 when he was hit with a hammer whereas consuming at a bar and describe Cole’s deteriorating psychological situation. His 2016 report mentioned that Cole “presents as a traditional instance of a severely regressed persistent schizophrenic affected person (with catatonic options), whose situation is probably going additional compromised by the beforehand detected mind dysfunction captured by neuroimaging research.” Hough concluded that Cole didn’t perceive or respect that he could also be executed or the explanations for his pending execution and was incompetent to be executed.

In an April 2022 report, after seeing Cole in his death-row cell, Hough mentioned that he noticed nothing “rational or coherent” in Cole’s conduct. He once more provided the opinion that Cole’s “present medical presentation is constant along with his analysis of extreme and persistent schizophrenia with catatonia, in addition to MRI-documented natural mind harm” and that Cole was incompetent to be executed.

The clemency petition additionally offered a competency report from neuroradiologist, Dr. Travis Snyder, who evaluated Cole in spring 2022. Dr. Snyder mentioned that an MRI administered in 2022 revealed “markedly irregular” element and “demonstrates a number of pathologic findings,” together with that Cole’s mind lesion “could also be exacerbating” his schizophrenia. Snyder, too, provided an opinion that Cole is “not competent to grasp his authorized proceedings.”

A majority of the board of pardons should suggest clemency earlier than the governor could commute a death-row prisoner’s demise sentence. In August 2022, Governor Stitt denied clemency to James Coddington, the primary of the scheduled executions, after a good suggestion from the board. Coddington was executed on August 25, 2022. Stitt issued a short lived reprieve to Richard Glossip, suspending his scheduled September 22, 2022 execution date till December to offer the Oklahoma courts time to find out whether or not they would grant Glossip a listening to on his innocence declare.

A College of North Carolina examine of executions from 2000 to 2015 discovered that “Twenty first-century executions disproportionately contain prisoners recognized with psychological sickness and who’ve skilled traumatic little one abuse.” A Loss of life Penalty Data Heart assessment of the 98 U.S. executions carried out from 2017 via 2021 corroborated these outcomes, discovering that just about 85% of these executed had proof of a number of of: severe psychological sickness; mind damage, developmental mind harm, or an IQ within the intellectually disabled vary; and persistent severe childhood trauma, neglect, and/or abuse. Data equipped by counsel for the prisoners at the moment slated for execution by Oklahoma additionally counsel that, like Cole, they’re disproportionally people with severe psychological well being points.