The Ohio Supreme Court ruling is available in Adobe .pdf format.
"Top court delays killer's execution," is the AP report filed byAndrew Welsh-Huggins. It's via the Zanesville Times Recorder.
The Ohio Supreme Court on Monday delayed a condemned inmate's execution following a judge's ruling that the inmate is too mentally ill to be put to death.
The court's decision means Abdul Awkal now is months or even years away from execution after coming within a few hours of dying by lethal injection June 6. He was sentenced to die for the 1992 killing of his estranged wife and brother-in-law.
The execution was set for Wednesday.
The court's unanimous decision said it maintained exclusive authority to set a new execution date.
A Cuyahoga County judge ruled last week that Awkal is too mentally ill to be put to death, citing the killer's belief that the CIA is orchestrating his execution. Judge Stuart Friedman held a hearing on Awkal's competency after he received a two-week reprieve from Gov. John Kasich.
State law requires Friedman to order that Awkal be treated for his mental illness and afterward conduct a hearing at the prosecutor's request to determine if he is still mentally ill.
"Ohio justices halt execution based on mental health," by Alan Johnson for the Columbus Dispatch.
The scheduled execution of convicted Cleveland killer Abdul Awkal on Wednesday was called off yesterday by the Ohio Supreme Court.
The stay of execution was a foregone conclusion, but a necessary one, after Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Stuart Friedman last week decided that Awkal could not be executed because he suffers from “severe and persistent mental disease” that made him incompetent to understand the connection between his crime and the death penalty.
Awkal, 53, a native of Lebanon, was scheduled to be lethally injected at 10 a.m. Wednesday at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility near Lucasville. He was originally scheduled to be executed on June 6, but Gov. John Kasich granted a two-week reprieve to allow time for a hearing to determine Awkal’s mental competency.
Earlier coverage of Abdul Awkal's case begins at the link.
The Supreme Court established standards to assess whether severely mentally ill inmates are competent to be executed in a 1986 case, Ford v. Wainwright; more via Oyez. Related posts are in the clemency, competency, and mental illness indexes.
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