Oklahoma executed inmate Benjamin Cole  on Thursday morning despite claims from his attorneys that he had been severely mentally ill. Cole was pronounced dead at 10:22 a.m. at Oklahoma's state penitentiary in McAlester. He was the sixth Oklahoma inmate to be executed since the state resumed carrying them out in October 2021. Cole delivered a sometimes rambling, two-minute prayer while strapped to the gurney. "Choose Jesus while you still can," he said. The first of the three lethal execution drugs began to flow at 10:06 a.m., and Cole was declared unconscious at 10:12. He could be heard snoring inside the death chamber. Attorneys for Cole did not dispute that he killed his infant daughter, 9-month-old Brianna Cole, by forcibly bending her backward, breaking her spine and tearing her aorta. But they argued that Cole was severely mentally ill and that he had a growing lesion on his brain that had worsened in recent years. Cole refused medical attention and ignored his personal hygiene, h