On April 7, 2026, a Cuyahoga County judge vacated the death sentence of Charles Maxwell and ordered his resentencing to life in prison without the possibility of parole. After an evidentiary hearing, the court found that Mr. Maxwell suffered from delusional disorder, caused by several traumatic brain injuries, at the time of the crime for which he was sentenced to death. According to data from the Ohio Attorney General’s office, Mr. Maxwell’s resentencing marks the 10th grant of relief under the state’s serious mental illness (SMI) law.
In 2021, Ohio enacted legislation barring the imposition of the death penalty and the execution of people “diagnosed” with certain serious mental illnesses at the time of their crime. The law outlines four qualifying diagnoses: (1) schizophrenia, (2) schizoaffective disorder, (3) bipolar disorder, or (4) delusional disorder. To qualify for relief under the statute, a petitioner must prove by a preponderance of the evidence that he had a severe mental illness at the time of his crime and that the condition significantly impaired his capacity either to conform his conduct to the requirements of law or to appreciate the nature, consequences, or wrongfulness of his conduct.
Mr. Maxwell was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of Nichole McCorkle, the mother of his child, in November 2005. Evidence at trial indicated that in the weeks leading up to her death, Ms. McCorkle had filed for a restraining order following a domestic violence incident. After Ms. McCorkle testified against Mr. Maxwell, Mr. Maxwell shot her twice in the head following a verbal altercation at her home. Mr. Maxwell was sentenced to death in 2007; the Ohio Supreme Court affirmed his conviction and sentence in 2014.
After Governor Mike DeWine signed the state’s SMI legislation into law in 2021, death-sentenced prisoners were given one year to petition the court to overturn their death sentences because of severe mental illnesses. Mr. Maxwell filed his petition in April 2022, and an evidentiary hearing took place in December 2025. At the hearing, experts for both Mr. Maxwell and the state presented their findings related to Mr. Maxwell’s mental illness.
Mr. Maxwell’s expert, Dr. Siddartha Nadkarni, a neuropsychiatrist with five board certifications and 25 years of research at NYU School of Medicine, diagnosed Mr. Maxwell with delusional disorder stemming from a series of traumatic brain injuries. In 1986, when he was twenty years old, Mr. Maxwell was unconscious for two days after being beaten; in 2003 he was thrown from a motorcycle and hit by a car; and later, months before the crime, he was again knocked unconscious during an assault at a gas station. Family members, and Mr. Maxwell himself, reported marked personality changes after each injury. Before his first injury in 1986, Mr. Maxwell had no criminal record; afterward, his behavior changed dramatically.
Dr. Nadkarni found “objective evidence” of brain damage, noting “evidence of abnormal brain scans, evidence of abnormal neuropsychological testing, abnormalities on [his] examination of [Mr. Maxwell] and in embedded tests in the neuropsychological testing that specifically show frontal lobe dysfunction.” Dr. Nadkarni also noted that CT scans of Mr. Maxwell’s brain from September 2024 showed signs of brain atrophy, a common occurrence with brain damage. According to Dr. Nadkarni, “there should be zero atrophy, so it means that something pathologic is happening.” Dr. Nadkarni testified that at the time of the crime, Mr. Maxwell was existing “in a state of perpetual threat and paranoia,” misreading neutral cues as threats, convinced he was being followed and targeted for death, and experiencing auditory hallucinations and out-of-body episodes.
The State’s expert, Dr. Stephen Noffsinger, a forensic psychiatrist at University Hospital, testified that Mr. Maxwell did not meet the SMI standard, stating his belief that prior evaluations would have detected delusional disorder if it had been present, and opined that Dr. Nadkarni’s methodology was unreliable. Dr. Noffsinger argued that the SMI statute should be interpreted consistent with the Model Penal Code standard for not guilty by reason of insanity (NGRI), meaning one’s qualifying mental illness would have had to so severely impair an individual’s faculties that he lacked substantial capacity to appreciate the wrongfulness of his conduct or conform his behavior to law — a standard similar to, but lower than Ohio’s own not guilty by reason of insanity standard. Through that lens, Dr. Noffsinger testified that Mr. Maxwell did not meet the requirements of the statute because a delusional disorder diagnosis severe enough to meet the second prong would be noticeable in Mr. Maxwell’ statements and behavior — and to him, it did not. When asked about evidence from the pre-trial record that showed symptoms of delusional thinking — auditory hallucinations, paranoia, and referential ideation documented by experts in 2006 — Dr. Noffsinger characterized them as consistent with malingering.
In his ruling, Judge David T. Matia rejected Dr. Noffsinger’s opinion on several grounds. The court found that Dr. Noffsinger applied the wrong legal standard in his assessment, and that his analysis wasincompatible with the statute. The Ohio General Assembly explicitly wrote the SMI legislation to require something less than legal insanity: “a severe mental illness substantially impacts one’s ability to conform their conduct to the requirements of law,” (emphasis original). The statute does not require the mental illness to eliminate an individual’s ability to conform their conduct.
Judge Matia also rejected Dr. Noffsinger’s reliance on the absence of a prior diagnosis. Both experts acknowledged that delusional disorder is a relatively rare and frequently undiagnosed condition, that by nature, tends not to produce the “obviously bizarre” behavior of other psychotic disorders. The court found that each of the prior evaluations had been for limited purposes, primarily competency, and that none of the evaluators had performed the neurological testing Mr. Maxwell’s own mitigation expert had recommended. Judge Matia also found that the pre-trial record corroborated the delusional disorder diagnosis, rather than being evidence of malingering, as Dr. Noffsinger argued. Documented paranoia, auditory hallucinations, out-of-body experiences, and referential thinking had all been noted by mental health experts at the time of Mr. Maxwell’s trial.
The court ultimately accepted Dr. Nadkarni’s testimony as the more medically and psychiatrically sound opinion, finding that his specialized expertise in neurology, brain injury, and the neurobiological basis of delusional disorder gave him a stronger basis for the diagnosis. Based upon Dr. Nadkarni’s findings, Judge Matia concluded that Mr. Maxwell “has proven, by a preponderance of the evidence, that he has suffered with delusional disorder for many years” and that he “suffered with delusional disorder” at the time of the crime. The judge also found that “[Mr.] Maxwell’s delusional disorder significantly impaired his capacity to exercise rational judgment in relation to his conduct with respect to conforming his conduct to the requirements of the law and also to appreciating the nature, consequences, or wrongfulness of his conduct.” Mr. Maxwell will now be resentenced to life without parole.
Ohio and Kentucky are the only two states with statutory exemptions for individuals with severe mental illness. But there have been efforts in several other states to pass similar legislation, and a number ofstate courts have considered whether people with severe mental illness should be categorically excluded from death penalty eligibility. Most recently, in overturning the conviction of Omar Deen, three California Supreme Court justices wrote in a concurring opinion that “[t]his court and/or the Legislature will eventually need to determine whether the reasoning [that created categorical exemptions to the death penalty in Atkins v. Virginia and Roper v. Simmon] applies to the execution of individuals suffering from severe mental illness.” The concurring opinion noted that the rationale in Atkins and Roper“remind[s] us, [that] a person may be competent to stand trial, sane at the time of the offense, and competent to be sentenced to decades in prison, yet fundamental notions of human decency may nonetheless prohibit their eligibility for execution.”
