A man convicted of the 2002 grisly murder of his 9-month-old daughter was executed at 10:22 a.m. in Oklahoma after he sued the state for its corporal punishment policies, joining a class action with dozens of other death row inmates that claimed the practice was unconstitutional. Attorneys for Benjamin Cole, 57, attempted to get the serial child abuser a more lenient sentence ahead of his execution, citing his deteriorating mental health, a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia and a growing lesion on his brain. In December 2002, Cole killed his daughter Brianna after her cries interrupted a video game he was playing, bending her backward while she laid on her stomach to the point of breaking her spine and tearing her aorta. “We should not have to wait 20 years for a 9-month-old baby to get her justice,” Donna Daniel, Brianna’s aunt, told reporters moments after Cole’s execution. Cole is the second inmate of a planned 24 that the state has slated to die through 2024.
Read it at Fox 25 OKC
