WESLEY COONCE, JR | CONDEMNED | Convicted and sentenced for the killing of a fellow prisoner in the mental health unit of a federal prison | Claimed his IQ was too low to be executed | ALS

Wesley Coonce Jr. Autographed Letter, Signed. Handwritten, Commercial #10 (4.125 × 9.5 envelope). Indianapolis, IN. Pmk: August 23, 2023. Content unknown. SEALED.

Coonce’s childhood was marked by emotional, physical, and sexual abuse. He cycled through child psychiatric institutions beginning at age four. He entered the Texas juvenile system at age 11. While in juvenile custody, he cut his own body and had to be restrained so he would not further harm himself. He was sentenced to adult prison at age 17, where he continued to engage in self-mutilation. At age 20, after Coonce’s release from state prison, he suffered a traumatic brain injury. Coonce broke multiple facial bones, experienced bleeding around the brain, and briefly entered a coma. His IQ plummeted from average into the range of intellectual disability.

The evidence presented at trial demonstrated that another inmate at the prison medical center, Victor Castro-Rodriguez, 51, was found dead on the floor of his cell on Jan. 26, 2010, and had been murdered by Coonce and Hall. At the time of the murder, Coonce was serving a life sentence for a kidnapping and carjacking that involved the brutal rape of a young woman, and Hall was serving a combined 194-month sentence from the District of Maine for making threatening communications against a federal judge and a federal prosecutor.

At age 29, while in federal prison serving a life sentence for kidnapping and carjacking, Coonce and his codefendant, Charles Michael Hall, attacked and killed Victor Castro Rodriguez, another prisoner. Hall was a decade older than Coonce, with an IQ about 30 points higher. It was Hall who bound, gagged, and blindfolded Castro. Hall consistently asserted that he had killed Castro by standing on his neck and suffocating him. Coonce, however, immediately claimed responsibility for the killing.

A jury convicted Coonce of first-degree murder and murder by a federal prisoner serving a life sentence.

VIDEO: Top 10 Scariest Criminals In The United States That Are Alive Today | https://youtu.be/CP3Oaiw9RWs

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