With Execution Looming, Judge Denies Competency Hearing for Oklahoma Death-Row Prisoner Benjamin Cole

A Pittsburg County, Oklahoma choose has denied a competency listening to for death-row prisoner Benjamin Cole (pictured), clearing the trail for his execution on October 20, 2022.

In a three-page ruling issued on October 4, 2022, Decide Mike Hogan conclusorily asserted that Cole’s attorneys had not met the required “substantial threshold displaying of madness” to obtain a jury trial on his competency to be executed. The ruling asserted that the knowledgeable experiences submitted by the events “are conflicting” and that the report submitted by the prosecution’s knowledgeable was “in depth in scope and within the supplies reviewed” and was “very persuasive on the difficulty of Defendant’s present capability.”

The ruling contained no examination of protection counsel’s proof that Cole suffers from schizophrenia and mind harm, is usually catatonic, and doesn’t perceive the explanations for his pending execution. Nonetheless, within the lone sentence addressing the substance of the problems earlier than the courtroom, Decide Hogan wrote: “In contemplating the totality of the proof, together with [the prosecution expert’s] report, the Courtroom FINDS the Defendant is competent to be executed as presently scheduled ….”

Cole’s protection workforce issued a press release from assistant federal defender Tom Hird in response to the ruling, saying, “Benjamin Cole is incapacitated by his psychological sickness to the purpose of being primarily non-functional. His personal attorneys haven’t been in a position to have a significant interplay with him for years, and the employees who work together with him within the jail on daily basis affirm that he can not talk or deal with his most simple hygiene. He merely doesn’t have a rational understanding of why Oklahoma seeks to execute him.”

Oklahoma legislation requires the warden to provoke proceedings for a jury dedication of competency if “there may be good purpose to consider {that a} defendant beneath judgment of dying has turn into insane.” “The warden’s refusal to provoke competency proceedings,” Hird stated, “is an abuse of his discretion, and we’ll promptly enchantment the denial of our mandamus petition.”

The courtroom performed a listening to on Cole’s petition for a competency trial on September 30, three days after the Oklahoma Board of Pardons and Parole had denied protection counsel’s petition for clemency. Cole’s attorneys wrote in that petition 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 risk to anybody in any means.” After a clemency listening to on September 27, the board voted 4-1 to disclaim the petition.

A College of North Carolina examine of executions from 2000 to 2015 discovered that “Twenty first-century executions disproportionately contain prisoners identified with psychological sickness and who’ve skilled traumatic youngster abuse.” A Demise Penalty Data Middle assessment of the 98 U.S. executions carried out from 2017 by way of 2021 corroborated these outcomes, discovering that just about 85% of these executed had proof of a number of of: critical psychological sickness; mind harm, developmental mind harm, or an IQ within the intellectually disabled vary; and persistent critical childhood trauma, neglect, and/or abuse.

Data provided by counsel for the 25 prisoners presently slated for execution by Oklahoma additionally recommend that, like Cole, they’re disproportionally people with critical psychological well being points. On October 5, 2022, Richard Fairchild filed his petition for clemency with the Board of Pardons and Parole, arguing that he suffers from “progressive and persistent mind illness attributable to years of catastrophic head trauma. … Throughout his 26 years on dying row,” the petition states, “[his] mind has continued to deteriorate; he can not inform the distinction between actuality and delusions.”

Fairchild is scheduled to be executed on November 17, 2022.