Vargas

Katie Vargas (“Vargas”) appeals the district court’s denial of her application for a stay of execution filed on behalf of her son, Jeremy Sagastegui (“Sagastegui”), a Washington state prisoner, who is scheduled to be executed on October 13, 1998. The district court held that Vargas lacked standing as Sagastegui’s “next friend” and that the district court therefore lacked jurisdiction to entertain her application. The court dismissed her ease, but issued a certificate of appealability to this court.

We conclude that Vargas has produced sufficient new evidence pertaining to Sagas-tegui’s alleged incompetence, not considered at the last state court competency hearing two-and-a-half years ago, to support her standing for the purposes of invoking our jurisdiction to issue a stay. Accordingly, we reverse the district court and issue a stay of execution to permit the state court to conduct a hearing to determine Sagastegui’s present competency.

I. FACTUAL BACKGROUND

A complete description of Sagastegui’s offense and state court proceedings appears in State v. Sagastegui, 135 Wash.2d 67 , 954 P.2d 1311 (1998). Sagastegui admitted sodomizing and killing a three-year old boy whom he…

dissenting.

Sagastegui was determined to be competent to make his own decisions in his ease after extensive psychiatric examination and judicial proceedings in the State of Washington courts in 1996, affirmed by the Supreme Court of Washington this April. State v. *1172 Sagastegui, 135 Wash.2d 67 , 954 P.2d 1311 (Wash.1998). Now we face last minute papers 1 to stay execution and enable Sagaste-gui’s mother to take over his defense. To succeed, she must show entitlement to act as “next friend,” that is, to take away from him control of his case. Because his competence to manage his case has been conclusively established, she must show that there is something new, some new reason why, because of his mental condition, he cannot competently decide how to proceed. There is nothing new of any significance.

Obviously Sagastegui is not a normal, healthy individual. A normal, healthy person would not rape, stab and drown a three year old boy, lie in wait for his mother, shoot her dead when she came home, and then shoot her friend and as she lay dying, tell her “hurry up and die.” That is what Sagastegui did. But there is no legal significance to whether Sagastegui is mentally normal.…