lawyers: Utah death row inmate 'delusional'
Tuesday , December 10, 2013 - 12:10 PM
Ron lafferty (Associated Press)...
SALT LAKE CITY -- Defense attorneys for a condemned killer who has chosen the firing squad for his execution says he remains incompetent to participate in a federal appeals process.
New court filings show lawyers say the 71-year-old Ron Lafferty suffers from psychotic delusions. They say Lafferty believed he was being tormented by the ghost of the judge's father during his second trial in the mid-1990s. He also believes a former attorney was the reincarnated sibling he had in England several hundred years ago.
Lafferty was condemned to death for the July 1984 slayings of his sister-in-law, Brenda Lafferty, and her baby daughter in American Fork. Lafferty claimed to have had a religious revelation sanctioning the slayings because of the victim's resistance to his beliefs in polygamy.
His attorneys requested another competency hearing in 2009.
