(Washington) A death row inmate was executed Thursday in the US state of Oklahoma despite doubts about his sanity.
Posted at 12:43 p.m.
Benjamin Cole, 57, received a lethal injection at McAlester Penitentiary in the central United States, according to prison authorities.
He had been sentenced to death in 2004 for the murder of his nine-month-old daughter. According to prosecutors, he killed her to silence her before resuming a game of video games.
According to his lawyers, he has long suffered from “paranoid schizophrenia” and brain damage. His condition has deteriorated in recent years and he lived before his execution “in an almost catatonic state”, without washing, walking or communicating, they explained recently.
However, the United States Supreme Court has prohibited the execution of convicts who do not understand what they are being punished for.
With the approach of the date scheduled for his execution, the defenders of Mr. Cole therefore multiplied, in vain, the recourses to try to save him.
Oklahoma authorities countered that a doctor had deemed him fit for execution.
The condemned man, a “Messianic Jew”, had “the intelligence to speak” but was silent with his lawyers because they did not understand “his extreme religiosity”, they had written in particular to the Supreme Court, which like the others courts refused to offer him respite.
During his execution, Benjamin Cole prayed aloud in an unintelligible manner, according to local reporters who served as witnesses. “Jesus is my master and saviour, Choose Jesus… His day is coming. I forgive all those to whom I have hurt, ”he notably stammered.
This is the 12e execution this year in the United States and the fourth in the state of Oklahoma which, after a pause linked to doubts about the legality of its injection protocol, has scheduled many executions in the coming months.