By Steve Olafson
OKLAHOMA CITY, April 12 (Reuters) – A federal judge halted
the scheduled execution Thursday of a convicted Oklahoma
murderer, saying the man’s claims of mental incompetence should
be further examined.
The stay, issued on Wednesday by U.S. District Judge David
Russell, was the second time Garry Thomas Allen, 56, escaped
execution because of questions over his mental competency.
Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt said he would appeal.
Allen was shot in the head by a police officer in 1986
minutes after he killed his estranged girlfriend, Lawanna Gail
Titsworth. She was shot four times outside an Oklahoma City day
care center while picking up the couple’s two sons.
He lost his left eye and suffered permanent brain damage
from the head wound, according to court records, but recovered
sufficiently to be declared competent to stand trial, where he
pleaded guilty and was sentenced to death.
An Oklahoma jury ruled in 2008 that Allen was sane enough to
be executed, despite testimony that his mental state had
declined during his years in prison and that he suffered from
mental illness, dementia and a history of alcoholism.
His first scheduled execution in 2005 was stopped when the
warden at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary gave notice that there
was good reason Allen had become insane.
A recommendation by a 4-1 vote of the Oklahoma Pardons and
Parole Board had recommended that Allen’s life be spared,
but Governor Mary Fallin denied the recommendation last month.
Allen had been one of two inmates in the United States
scheduled to be put to death on Thursday.
In Florida, a serial killer convicted of murdering six women
in the early 1980s is scheduled to be executed Thursday evening
for the death of his final young victim.
Barring a last-minute reprieve, David Alan Gore, 58, will be
given a lethal dose of chemicals at the Florida State Prison for
the 1983 kidnapping and murder of Vero Beach teenager Lynn
Elliot.
(Additional reporting by Michael Peltier. Editing by Corrie
MacLaggan, Cynthia Johnston and M.D. Golan, Doina Chiacu)
