Guest column: Why Oklahoma should not execute Benjamin Cole
Over the last several years, particularly since the COVID-19 pandemic began, Oklahomans have become increasingly aware of our growing mental health crisis. This reality has generated calls to remedy longstanding systemic failures in identifying, diagnosing, treating and supporting those with mental health challenges. Despite this crisis, on Oct. 20, Oklahoma plans to execute Benjamin Cole, a person with severe mental illness.
Cole is a man who is so debilitated by paranoid schizophrenia and brain damage that he barely speaks or moves, crawls on his cell floor or drags himself into and out of a wheelchair, and cannot care for his most basic hygiene. It should shock our collective conscience that an execution of a person in this state would be carried out in our names.
Cole’s mental health journey is one we observe all too frequently as we work to identify public policy solutions to this mental health crisis, which plays a key role in our growing problem of homelessness. Cole’s family experienced generations of mental illness, which went mostly undiagnosed. Both of his parents were addicted to drugs and alcohol, and his mother abused those substances while pregnant with Cole. He was born into an environment of poverty, neglect and abuse, surrounded by adults battling their own mental illness and addiction. He and his siblings were abused physically, psychologically and sexually throughout their childhood, and his own family members introduced him to alcohol when he was just a child.
Compounding this unimaginable childhood adversity, when Cole’s schizophrenia began to manifest in his late teens and early 20s, he received no support or intervention. Like many in similar circumstances, Cole slipped into homelessness and addiction. Tragically, in 2002, he killed his infant daughter.
After Cole’s arrest, his attorneys and the judge recognized that his mental health was seriously compromised. Even after he was deemed competent to stand trial at that time, the prosecutors offered to let him plead guilty in exchange for a life without parole sentence. Cole had confessed to the crime and expressed deep remorse, but because of his persistent mental delusions, he rejected this deal.
For nearly two decades in the extreme solitary confinement on death row, Cole’s mental and physical condition have deteriorated significantly. He was finally diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in 2008. In addition, a large and growing lesion was found in his brain in an area associated with schizophrenia. Today, he is a 57-year-old man who has trouble walking and also exhibits other Parkinsonian symptoms, but will not allow himself to be evaluated. He stays in his darkened cell, barely moving, sometimes with a towel or T-shirt wrapped over his head and eyes. Prison staff and medical personnel describe him as catatonic; he often goes weeks or months without speaking to anyone, and he will not leave his cell voluntarily for any reason. His attorneys have been unable to have a meaningful conversation with him about his case ― or anything else ― for years.
The U.S. Constitution and Oklahoma law forbid the execution of someone who lacks any rational understanding of why the state is taking his life. This determination must be made at the time of a scheduled execution, but the warden of the Oklahoma State Penitentiary has refused to initiate competency proceedings for Cole. On Sept. 30, a Pittsburg County district court is expected to decide whether a competency trial should be ordered. It is difficult to imagine how the court could deny Cole’s request for such a proceeding, given his present condition and the extensive evidence documenting his severe mental illness.
Cole's attorneys also have filed a clemency petition, asking the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board and Gov. Kevin Stitt to commute his death sentence to life without parole. His clemency petition details that because of his deteriorated state, he poses no threat to anyone. The petition also notes that any rational defendant would have taken the plea deal offered in 2004.
It is too late to provide Benjamin Cole the kind of interventions that might have averted his crime in the first place. But we can still acknowledge his inherent humanity ― and the reality of his devastating mental illness ― by allowing him to live out what remains of his life with hope that he finally receives the mental health care he should have been afforded decades ago. The board and the governor should grant Cole’s clemency request.
Brett Farley is the executive director of the Catholic Conference of Oklahoma and serves as the state coordinator for Oklahoma Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Opinion: Why Oklahoma should not execute Benjamin Cole
