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Hayward native Scott Panetti learned the date of his impending execution two weeks after the order had been signed when one of his lawyers read about it in a newspaper, a motion filed Monday in Texas alleges.

"It was appalling to pick up the newspaper and learn this," said Kathryn Kase, who has represented Panetti for 10 years.

The Thursday story in the Houston Chronicle said an execution date had been set for Dec. 3. The order — submitted by District Attorney E. Bruce Curry — was signed by the judge on Oct. 16.

Kase said no one from Curry's office or the court contacted her office.

"We have telephones and working emails," she said. "They know how to get ahold of us."

Curry was not available for comment Monday. Lucy Wilke, Curry's assistant, said he had instructed her not to comment.

The twist is the latest in a string of bizarre events in the case, which began in 1992 when Panetti, now 56, shot and killed his ex-wife's parents in Fredericksburg, Texas.

Panetti, an all-star football player at Poynette High School, had been discharged from the Navy for mental illness and was hospitalized 15 times for schizophrenia before the killings. He represented himself at the trial, wearing a purple cowboy suit.

"It was a farce and a joke," said Jessica McBride, a senior lecturer at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee who is a childhood friend of Panetti's sister, Victoria, and attended two weeks of the trial in 1995.

Panetti subpoenaed Jesus Christ, the Pope and John F. Kennedy. He pointed a rifle at the jury during his closing arguments. The jury deliberated for four hours before finding that he should be put to death.

Panetti was one day from execution in 2004 when the order was stayed so an appeals court could consider his lawyers' argument that he was too mentally ill to understand why he is being executed.

Panetti has said he believes his execution is being orchestrated by Satan for preaching the Gospel to his fellow inmates and not because of the killings.

Three years later, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the sentence on a 5-4 vote, saying the lower courts had not taken Panetti's mental health history into account.

"He suffers from a severe, documented mental illness that is the source of gross delusions preventing him from comprehending the meaning and purpose of the punishment to which he has been sentenced," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in his majority opinion.

The case was sent back to the trial court to reconsider. The lower court again found that Panetti was faking his illness and issued a new execution order.

Panetti's lawyers again appealed, but the U.S. Supreme Court refused to reconsider the case and the stay of execution was lifted Oct. 6.

In their filing Monday, Panetti's lawyers asked for an immediate hearing to discuss withdrawing or modifying the execution date and to allow them "meaningful opportunity" to argue his competency.

Kase said in an interview Monday that the ramifications of Panetti's case are too important to act hastily.

"This raises troubling moral questions about why the state of Texas is rushing to execute this mentally ill man," she said.

She said in 24 years as a lawyer she had never had a case where she had not been told by the court about a signed execution order.

Panetti's case has been decried by mental health advocacy organizations as "an abomination."

"His execution would be a miserable spectacle," said Ron Honberg, national director for policy and legal affairs at the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

Panetti would become the 519th person to be put to death by lethal injection in Texas since 1982 when that procedure was first used.

Editor's note: An earlier posted version of this story misidentified prosecutor E. Bruce Curry as E. Bruce Kerr.