GREENSBURG, Kan. (AP) — A mentally ill Kansas man has pleaded no contest to killing a man three days after he was released from a state psychiatric hospital in a case that prompted a state inquiry.

The Kansas City Star reports that Brandon Brown, of Haviland, pleaded no contest Tuesday in Kiowa County to second-degree murder. Prosecutors said he beat 61-year-old Jerry Martinez so severely in May 2015 at a residential care facility that Martinez died a few weeks later.

Brown spent a week at the state-run psychiatric hospital in Osawatomie after he scuffled with two other residents at the Haviland Care Center west of Wichita. The beating happened after he returned to Haviland.

Brown’s father, James Brown, has argued his son was released too quickly because of state budget problems.