Lawyer objects to competency reevaluation for Ricky Ray Malone

Days after the Oklahoma Attorney General filed a motion to reevaluate the competency of Ricky Ray Malone to push forward his execution for the 2003 execution-style killing of a state trooper, his lawyer filed an objection in the Comanche County District Court.

On Wednesday, Malone’s lawyer, Robert S. Jackson, of Oklahoma City, filed the objection in Comanche County District Court. In it, he argues that after Malone was found incompetent in October 2017 and sent to the Oklahoma Forensic Center in Vinita, that his condition remains unchanged, according to a 2022 evaluation by Dr. Satwant Tandon.

Tandon issued a report after the last time the State discussed a competency reevaluation. Following evaluation, he determined Malone’s clinical condition was “essentially unchanged from the time of admission.”

Jackson argues that, “given the State’s declination of seeking a competency evaluation upon receipt of Dr. Tandon’s July 2022 report, it is unclear what precipitates the State’s present haste to obtain an evaluation” … without the presentation of “any new evidence to indicate that there has been a change in Mr. Malone’s competency status,” according to the objection. A more detailed objection is being prepared by Jackson.

No date for a ruling has been docketed.

Attorney General Gentner Drummond’s Dec. 9 motion filing seeks the reevaluation of Malone. He stated afterwards he believed the over 20 years late-Oklahoma Highway Patrol Trooper Nik Green’s family have had to wait for justice is a “travesty.”

Southwest Oklahoma Representatives Trey Caldwell, Daniel Pae, Brad Boles, Toni Hasenbeck, Rande Worthen, Stacy Adams and Jonathan Wilk, R-Goldsby, thanked Drummond for the action.

Malone, now 50, was 29 years old when he committed his crime. A former Duncan firefighter and an employee for Comanche County Memorial Service in 2002 and 2003, Malone had gotten into methamphetamine use and former co-workers said he fetishized firearms.

Events began when Malone had passed out behind the wheel of his sister’s Geo Metro on Boohr Road in Cotton County, on the edge of Devol. He was awakened by Green at 6:30 a.m., Dec. 26, 2003. He’d passed out from taking two painkillers for back pain. In the trunk of the car was an active meth lab. During his trial, he testified he’d not slept due to meth use from Dec. 4 to Dec. 26, 2003.

Green found Malone and when he shined his flashlight on the sleeping man in the driver’s seat, the convicted killer testified “voices in my head” prompted him to struggle with the officer.

The trooper’s dash cam captured the moment a handcuffed Malone wrestled the trooper’s gun away. He fired the fatal bullets after Green, who was lying on the roadway, pleaded for his life.

Malone would be arrested five days later.

On May 19, 2005, a Comanche County jury found Malone guilty of first-degree murder and due to aggravating circumstances and recommended the death penalty.

Former Comanche County District Judge Mark. R. Smith concurred and on June 16, 2004, Malone was ordered to pay for the crime with his life.