Oklahoma death row inmate mumbles incoherently during insanity hearing

Benjamin Cole

Benjamin Robert Cole did not respond to most questions, as attorneys argues his mental state has deteriorated while imprisoned for 2002 murder of daughter

An Oklahoma man scheduled to die for killing his 9-month-old daughter mumbled about religion Friday during a hearing about his sanity, but only answered a few questions when testifying.

Attorneys for Benjamin Robert Cole don't think he's sane enough to be executed. They say the prison warden is violating a state law that requires her to notify the local district attorney when an inmate has become insane.

Cole was in a wheelchair during the hearing in a Pittsburg County courtroom in McAlester, where Cole is being housed at the Oklahoma state penitentiary. The 50-year-old with long hair and a graying beard mostly mumbled and appeared to have his eyes closed as he sat slumped over while testifying.

He didn't respond to most of the questions.

When District Judge James Bland asked Cole why he was being executed, the inmate responded: "Go home. Go home to be with Jesus."

Cole, of Claremore, is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on 7 October. He was convicted of 1st-degree murder in Rogers County for the 2002 killing of his daughter, Brianna Cole, whose spine was broken and her aorta torn after she was forcefully bent backward.

Cole has not denied killing the child.

An investigator for the public defender's office who interviewed Cole several times, said he mostly talks about scriptures and his "ministry", which she said she doesn't understand.

"He always talks about the end times and various messages the Lord has given him," investigator Julie Gardner said.

But Warden Anita Trammell said she's been able to converse with Cole on numerous occasions and that he understands why he's being executed.

"When I've pulled him out to talk to him, he's engaged in conversation," Trammell said.

In a court filing, though, federal public defender Susan Otto wrote: "Mr Cole's condition has deteriorated steadily since his conviction." The US supreme court has held that executing an insane person is unconstitutional.

Otto says Cole's ability to participate in his defense has been in question since the inception of the case, and she told the state's pardon and parole board last week during a clemency hearing that Cole once went 2 years without showering or leaving his cell.

A forensic psychiatrist hired by Cole's attorneys, Dr Raphael Morris, testified at Cole's clemency hearing that Cole sat before him in a catatonic state during an hourlong visit at the penitentiary and didn't make eye contact or utter a single word.

The pardon and parole board voted 3-2 against recommending clemency to the governor, who could only have granted clemency with a recommendation from the board.

But even a clemency recommendation would have been no guarantee that Governor Mary Fallin would have spared his life.

The board voted 4-1 to recommend clemency for death row inmate Garry Allen, but Fallin still rejected the recommendation and said his execution should proceed. Allen, who suffered a brain injury after being shot in the head during his arrest, appeared confused during his 2012 execution and seemed startled when a prison official announced the start of the lethal injection.

Source: The Guardian, August 28, 2015

Report an error, an omission: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com

USA | What happens in the final weeks before an execution? These reporters were inside the room.

The journalists behind ‘The Last 12 Weeks’ earned extraordinary access to a death penalty defense team—and faced difficult ethical choices Many defense lawyers are naturally cagey. They work in a pressure cooker, protecting their clients’ rights while fighting for the best possible outcome. And arguably, the stakes can’t get any higher than trying to save a client’s life. So no, defense lawyers don’t usually invite journalists into strategy meetings. But that’s what happened when Marshall Project reporter Maurice Chammah and Serial Productions senior producer Alvin Melathe spent the final few months before a Texas execution embedded with a capital defense team.

North Korea | 'I was only 9': North Korean defector recalls childhood memory of public execution

Kim Eun-joo was 9 years old when her teacher stopped their lesson and told the class to follow her outside. The children were marched to a public execution ground in North Korea. “I would cry even when our family dog died,” Kim said in a recent interview with The Korea Times. “But the first time I watched humans killing a human, I had no words for what I was feeling. It was the most brutal scene I have ever seen, in any movie or in real life.” The memory has stayed with her ever since. Now a human rights advocate after defecting from North Korea, Kim recently brought that childhood scene to the 9th World Congress Against the Death Penalty in Paris, where North Korea’s use of public executions and capital punishment was officially placed on the agenda for the first time.

19 July 1943 | Auschwitz's Largest Public Hanging: 12 Polish Prisoners Executed in Escape Reprisal

OSWIECIM, Poland — The SS carried out the largest public hanging in Auschwitz history on July 19, 1943, executing 12 Polish prisoners before other inmates as collective punishment for escapes and civilian contacts. The victims, all from the camp’s surveyors’ labor unit, were hanged on gallows built in front of the camp kitchen during an Auschwitz I roll call. The SS orchestrated this reprisal following prisoner escapes from the surveyors’ detail and unauthorized communication between inmates and civilians. Camp authorities used the recent escapes as a pretext to impose collective punishment.

Texas: The inmates who refused to die quietly and had to be gassed out of their cells before execution

Former crime reporter Michelle Lyons, who witnessed nearly 300 executions in Texas, US, reveals the desperate acts of death row prisoners who refused to accept their fate After spending years or often decades locked up in a tiny cell for 23 hours a day, most Death Row inmates go willingly to their executions. However, some refuse to die quietly - with officers forced to gas them out of cells, strap up their heads and even give chase across prison grounds. Michelle Lyons, who has witnessed nearly 300 executions in Texas, US, exclusively tells Sun Online how certain inmates "fight like hell" in their last moments. On most occasions, Michelle watched from the witness area, with the killers already on the gurney - the stretcher where they'd be given a lethal injection. Seven prisoners once tried to escape from the Row in Huntsville - with one shoving magazines and newspapers under his clothes to help him roll over razor-wire fences. Others have had to b...

Japan: Capital punishment for a minor

Death chamber at Tokyo Detention Center The Supreme Court's recent decision to uphold the death sentence given in a lay judge trial to a 24-year-old man for murders he committed when he was a minor raises questions about the lay judge trial system and capital punishment. These include whether the lay judges correctly understood the spirit of the Juvenile Law in sentencing the defendant to death. It was the 1st death sentence handed down on a minor in a lay judge trial. The murders took place in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, in 2010 when Yutaro Chiba was 18 - meaning he fell under the purview of the Juvenile Law. Chiba was convicted of entering his ex-girlfriend's house and stabbing to death the girl's sister and a female friend of the girl with a butcher knife, seriously injuring a male friend of the sister and abducting the girl. Prosecutors said Chiba killed the victims because they were trying to separate him and his former girlfriend. Since Chiba pleaded n...

Former Florida cop to be executed on same day as 80-year-old Pasco man

In an unprecedented move in the modern history of capital punishment, Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday cleared the way for 2 executions to occur on the same day. DeSantis reset the execution of James Duckett, whose execution earlier this year was stayed amid efforts to secure DNA testing and analysis of evidence in his case. Duckett’s execution was reset for July 28. That is the same day previously set for the execution of Dominick Occhicone. Court records indicate that Duckett’s execution is scheduled for noon. Occhicone’s is set to follow at 6 p.m.

Idaho | Death row prisoners sue over state's new firing squad

BOISE (Idaho Statesman) – Days after Idaho made the switch to a firing squad for executions, two Idaho death row prisoners next in line to be put to death sued the state prison system, saying its director withheld information about how she settled on the specifics for carrying out the method. Attorneys for prisoners Thomas Creech and Gerald Pizzuto filed suit this week in state district court against Idaho Department of Correction Director Bree Derrick. In the filing, they called her approval of an updated standard operating procedure for the firing squad and lethal injection as a backup method “arbitrary, capricious, or an abuse of discretion and in excess of the statutory authority of the agency.”

Florida executes Dennis Sochor

Man, 74, becomes oldest inmate executed in Florida in state’s 10th lethal injection this year Florida put to death one of its oldest prisoners in its history on Tuesday, a 74-year-old convicted murderer who was 1 of 3 older inmates scheduled for execution within the span of a month in the nation’s busiest death penalty state. Dennis Sochor was pronounced dead at 6:16 p.m. following a 3-drug injection at Florida State Prison near Starke, the office of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said. He was convicted of killing a woman on Jan. 1, 1982, just hours after meeting her at a New Year’s Eve party.

Oldest inmate set to be executed in Florida will face strict spending limit for final meal

An entire category of food is also off-limits for final meal requests in Florida Florida is currently preparing to execute its oldest inmate later today (July 14), a 74-year-old convicted murderer who has been on death row since the 1980s—but his final meal will be limited by a strict budget. Dennis Sochor is scheduled to be put to death later today, making history as the oldest inmate to ever be executed in the state. The criminal, who has been on death row for nearly 40 years, will be administered the lethal three-drug injection, with the process due to begin at around 6pm.

Florida | Former warden recalls botched electrocution that left him battling PTSD for 13 years and turned him into an abolitionist

Ron McAndrew anticipated it would be just another standard execution. He had been assigned to carry out the death of Cuban refugee Pedro Medina via electric chair within the confines of Florida State Prison. Fifteen years had passed since Medina's conviction for the murder of 52-year-old Dorothy James, and McAndrew's responsibility was to oversee the administration of lethal electrical currents to his brain. Having already supervised two previous executions using the identical procedure and raised in a community that strongly supported capital punishment, he expected a swift conclusion with justice delivered.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog