A 57-year-old Oklahoma man is due to be executed by lethal injection Thursday for murdering his nine-month-old daughter in 2002, despite his lawyers’ insistence that he is mentally ill and not competent to understand the sentence. .
Benjamin Cole’s attorneys do not dispute that he killed Brianna Cole in a fit of violence that broke her spine, but argue that he is very ill and has a brain injury that has continued to grow and worsen since he has been in prison.
Cole has refused medical care and neglected his personal hygiene, hoarding food and living in a dark cell with little or no communication with guards and other prisoners, his attorney told the state Board of Pardons last month.
The panel denied clemency by a 4-1 vote, and a district judge ruled this month that Cole is competent to be executed. A last minute appeal to the US Supreme Court was rejected on Wednesday.
Cole suffers from a brain injury, which is separate from a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, which has been growing and affects a part of the brain responsible for problem solving, movement and social interaction, said his attorney Katrina Conrad-Legler.
Prosecutors and members of the victim’s family told the board that Cole’s mental symptoms are exaggerated and that the brutality of his daughter’s crime warrants his execution.
Assistant District Attorney Tessa Henry said Cole killed the girl because she was interrupting a video game with her crying.
“He does not have a serious mental illness,” said another prosecutor. “There is nothing in the constitution or the jurisprudence that prevents its execution.”
Prosecutors noted that the girl had numerous injuries consistent with a history of abuse and that Cole had previously served prison time for abusing another minor.
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