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McA 57-year-old Oklahoma man is scheduled to receive a lethal injection on Thursday for killing his 9-month-old daughter in 2002, despite claims by his attorneys that he is mentally ill and not competent to be executed.
Attorneys for Benjamin Cole do not dispute that he killed Brianna Cole by forcibly bending the infant backward, breaking her spine and tearing her aorta, but argue that he is both severely mentally ill and that he has a growing lesion on his brain that has continued to worsen while he has been in prison.
Cole has refused medical attention and ignored his personal hygiene, hoarding food and living in a darkened cell with little to no communication with staff or fellow prisoners, his attorneys told the state’s Pardon and Parole Board last month during a clemency hearing.
“His condition has continued to decline over the course of this year,” Cole’s attorney Katrina Conrad-Legler said.
The panel voted 4-1 to deny clemency, and a district judge earlier this month determined Cole was competent to be executed. A last-minute appeal filed with the U.
