Entries tagged with “Benjamin Cole”
Issues
Jul 09, 2024
Disability Pride Month Series: Serious Mental Illness Exemptions and Legislation
This July, in honor of Disability Pride Month, the Death Penalty Information Center is posting a weekly feature highlighting issues related to the death penalty and disability, as well as individuals who have played key roles in changing the laws to protect prisoners with disabilities. This year, at least 4 of the 9 individuals executed presented strong evidence of serious mental health impairments. In light of longstanding concerns from experts and defense counsel, some state legislatures…
State & Federal Info
Military
,Nov 10, 2023
A Veterans Day Review: Uneven Progress Understanding the Role of Military Service in Capital Crimes
In 2015, DPIC’s Battle Scars report brought worldwide attention to the issue of military veterans on death row. DPIC found approximately 300 veterans incarcerated under a sentence of death, representing at least 10% of death row, and many more who had been executed. Since that report, research and understanding about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), traumatic brain injury (TBI), substance use disorders, and mental illness among veterans has only grown. A 2023 survey of members of the…
Issues
Oct 05, 2022
With Execution Looming, Judge Denies Competency Hearing for Oklahoma Death-Row Prisoner Benjamin Cole
A Pittsburg County, Oklahoma judge has denied a competency hearing for death-row prisoner Benjamin Cole (pictured), clearing the path for his execution on October 20, 2022. In a three-page ruling issued on October 4, 2022, Judge Mike Hogan conclusorily asserted that Cole’s lawyers had not met the required “substantial threshold showing of insanity” to receive a jury trial on his competency to be executed. The ruling asserted that the expert reports submitted by the parties “are conflicting”…
Issues
Upcoming Executions
,Sep 22, 2022
Lawyers for Mentally Ill Oklahoma Death-Row Prisoner Seek Clemency, Competency Trial
Lawyers for Oklahoma death-row prisoner Benjamin Cole have filed a petition with the Oklahoma Board of Pardons and Parole asking the Board to recommend to Governor Kevin Stitt that Cole’s sentence be commuted to life without parole. The petition, submitted to the board on September 16, 2022, states that “Benjamin Cole today is a frail, 57-year-old man with a damaged and deteriorating brain, suffering from progressive and severe mental illness who poses no threat to anyone in any way.” Cole…
Executions
Upcoming Executions
,Jun 13, 2022
Oklahoma Attorney General Requests 25 Execution Dates Despite Independent Investigation and Claims of Innocence, Serious Mental Illness, and Brain Damage
Oklahoma state prosecutors are pushing to schedule 25 executions over approximately two years, after a federal judge denied death-row prisoners’ challenge to the state’s controversial lethal-injection protocol. On June 10, 2022, Oklahoma Attorney General John O’Connor asked the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals to set execution dates for 25 of the 28 prisoners who were parties to the execution-protocol challenge. The request came just four days after Judge Stephen Friot’s ruling that the…
Research
Native Americans
,May 14, 2021
Oklahoma Attorney General Attempts to Limit Supreme Court Tribal Sovereignty Ruling as State Appeals Court Voids Four Capital Convictions
The Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office has asked the United States Supreme Court to stay an Oklahoma appeals court ruling that voided the conviction of an Oklahoma death-row prisoner for a triple murder committed on tribal lands against members of the Chickasaw Nation while state prosecutors seek review of that ruling by the U.S. high court. The state prosecutors’ filing in Oklahoma v. Bosse, which the tribe opposes, comes in the midst of four decisions by the Oklahoma Court of Criminal…
Issues
Native Americans
,May 03, 2021
Capital Case Roundup — Death Penalty Court Decisions the Week of April 26, 2021
NEWS (4/29/21) — Oklahoma: The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals has vacated the convictions and death sentences of two more death-row prisoners who, the court found, had committed their offenses against Native Americans on tribal lands. Applying the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark tribal sovereignty ruling in McGirt v. Oklahoma, the court found that the murders for which Benjamin Robert Cole Sr. and James Chandler Ryder had been convicted occurred in “Indian country” within the historical…