Next month’s scheduled execution of a Texas death row inmate, whose attorneys say gouged out both of his eyes — each a separate incident — because of severe mental illness, was delayed by a judge on Tuesday.

Andre Thomas had been set to be executed on April 5, sentenced to death for fatally stabbing in March 2004 his estranged wife Laura Christine Boren, 20, their 4-year-old son Andre Lee and her 13-month-old daughter Leyha Marie Hughes, cutting out the hearts of the two children.

He later told police God had instructed him to commit the killings and that he believed all three were demons. The killings of Boren and her children shocked Sherman, a city of about 45,000 residents 65 miles (105 kilometers) north of Dallas. …

The Supreme Court has prohibited the death penalty for the intellectually disabled, but not for people with serious mental illness. However, it has ruled that a person must be competent to be executed.

[A lot of death-sentence appeals use mental illness as an argument for commutation. Normally one would be skeptical about such arguments, but in this case I think we can make an exception. There’s no way this person is even minimally competent. — Ed]