AUSTIN, Texas (AP) – The state’s top criminal appeals court has granted a stay of next week’s execution of a convict whose attorneys assert is not mentally competent to be put to death.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted the stay of Kwame Rockwell’s execution, scheduled for Wednesday, and ordered a lower court to appoint at least two mental health experts to examine him.
Rockwell has been sentenced to be put to death for the 2010 killing of 22-year-old Fort Worth convenience store clerk Daniel Rojas during a robbery. A bread deliveryman also was killed.
Rockwell’s attorneys had asserted that he has a lifelong history of severe mental illness with fixed delusions that snakes and demons surround him and invade his body.
