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A federal appeals court docket has delayed a listening to wherein an Oklahoma loss of life row inmate – who killed a 10-year-old woman as a part of a cannibalistic fantasy – is predicted to make a remaining plea for mercy earlier than his scheduled execution.

The three-member panel of the U.S. Courtroom of Appeals for the tenth Circuit delayed Monday’s scheduled listening to of the Pardon and Parole Board. The panel was set to satisfy to contemplate Kevin Underwood’s clemency bid.

Two of the board’s members have resigned in latest weeks, and Underwood’s attorneys declare he has a proper to a listening to earlier than a full five-member board. Certainly one of Gov. Kevin Stitt‘s appointees to the board, Calvin Prince, resigned after coming beneath legal investigation for allegedly sending inappropriate messages to a girl he was counseling as a part of a court-mandated divorce program in Pontotoc County. One other of Stitt’s appointees, Edward Konieczny, additionally stepped down from the board final month.

“The keep is irritating however we’re continuing with all authorized avenues to permit the listening to to happen this week and to maintain the execution on schedule,” Leslie Berger, a spokeswoman for the Oklahoma legal professional basic’s workplace, mentioned in an announcement.

The 44-year-old Underwood is scheduled to obtain a deadly injection on Dec. 19 for the 2006 slaying of 10-year-old Jamie Rose Bolin, who lived in Underwood’s residence complicated in Purcell, Oklahoma.

Underwood admitted to investigators that he killed the woman as a part of a cannibalistic fantasy, though there was no proof that any cannibalism came about. The woman’s physique was present in a plastic tub in Underwood’s residence, and her head had been practically minimize off.

Underwood’s attorneys do not deny that he killed the woman, however they declare he suffered from psychological sickness that included a “deeply disturbed fantasy life that he finally acted upon.”