2 Texas inmates set to die this month lose at Supreme Court

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused appeals from 2 convicted killers facing execution in Texas this month, including 1 inmate set to die next week.

The high court, without comment, declined to review appeals from death row inmates Robert Pruett and Anthony Shore.

Pruett, 38, is set to die Oct. 12 for the fatal 1999 stabbing of a corrections officer at a South Texas prison where he already was serving a 99-year sentence for his involvement in another killing. Shore, 55, is scheduled for lethal injection Oct. 18 for the 1992 slaying of a 21-year-old woman in Houston.

Pruett's attorneys have long questioned the evidence in his case. They have sought additional DNA testing of evidence used to convict him of the December 1999 killing of Daniel Nagle, a 37-year-old officer at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's McConnell Unit near Beeville, about 85 miles southeast of San Antonio.

Pruett was serving 99 years for murder at the prison for participating with his father and a brother in a neighbor's slaying. Evidence showed the killing of the corrections officer stemmed from a dispute over a peanut butter sandwich that Pruett wanted to take into a prison recreation yard in violation of rules. Pruett testified at his 2002 trial in Corpus Christi that he was innocent in Nagle's death.

His attorney, David Dow, a law professor at the University of Houston, did not immediately respond to a phone message seeking comment Monday.

In 2015, Pruett came within hours of execution before his punishment was stopped by a state judge.

Shore, who confessed to killing the 21-year-old woman, 2 teenage girls and a 9-year-old girl, is known in Houston as the "Tourniquet Killer" because his victims were tortured and strangled with handmade tourniquets.

The slayings connected to Shore went unsolved for years until DNA evidence linked him to the sexual assault of 2 relatives who were juveniles. He subsequently confessed to the killings and was convicted in 2004 in the slaying of 21-year-old Maria del Carmen Estrada. Her body was found in 1992 in the drive-thru lane of a Dairy Queen.

Shore's lawyer, Knox Nunnally, had hoped his client's death sentence could be reduced to life in prison. He has said Shore suffered from traumatic brain injury.

Nunnally didn't immediately respond to a call for comment on the Supreme Court ruling.

The justices on Monday also refused the appeals of 3 other Texas death row inmates: Kwame Rockwell of Fort Worth; Jaime Cole, from Ecuador and convicted in Houston; and Garcia White of Houston. None of them has an execution date.

Rockwell, 41, received a death sentence for the 2010 killing of 22-year-old Fort Worth convenience store clerk Daniel Rojas during a robbery. A bread deliveryman also was killed in the holdup.

Cole, 47, was sent to death row for the fatal 2010 shootings of his estranged wife, Melissa Cole, 31, and her 15-year-old daughter, Alecia Castillo, at their apartment in Houston.

White, 54, was convicted in the fatal stabbings of twin 16-year-old sisters, Annette and Bernette Edwards, in 1989 in Houston. He was charged but not tried for killing their mother, and was linked to 2 other slayings.

Source: Associated Press, October 3, 2017

U.S. Supreme Court denies Houston serial killer's appeal, execution date set

The U.S. Supreme Court slapped down a Houston serial killer's bid for life Monday, propelling "Tourniquet Killer" Anthony Shore 1 step closer to his Oct. 18 date with death.

Now, the 55-year-old murderer's hope hangs on last-ditch efforts in the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

"We are disappointed," said Knox Nunnally, the Houston attorney representing Shore through the federal appeals process.

Currently the only Houston killer with a scheduled execution date, Shore was convicted of 1 count of capital murder in 2004 - even after he confessed to 3 others.

His brutal killing streak started at least as far back as 1986, when he slaughtered 14-year-old Laurie Tremblay. 6 years later, he raped and murdered 21-year-old Maria del Carmen Estrada then ditched her naked body outside a Spring Branch Dairy Queen.

In 1994, he killed his youngest victim, 9-year-old Diana Rebollar. A year later, he murdered 16-year-old Dana Sanchez, who disappeared while hitchhiking to her boyfriend's house in north Houston.

But the cases turned cold and the crimes went unsolved for nearly 2 decades, until Shore was arrested for molesting family members.

As a convicted sex offender, the former telephone technician's DNA went on file and eventually investigators matched it to the Estrada case.

When police confronted him, he calmly confessed to Estrada's brutal murder along with the 3 others.

After he was convicted the following year, he stunned onlookers in court by asking for the death penalty. But ever since then, his lawyers have filed appeal after appeal, hoping a deluge of paperwork can save their condemned client.

Court denies petitions

When state District Judge Maria T. Jackson in July gave a green light to prosecutors' request for an execution date, Nunnally had already filed a petition for a writ of certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court. The filing, which rested on a claim that Shore suffered brain damage before the slayings, would have required a lower court to reconsider a request for appeal.

It was always a long shot.

"I would certainly say that the odds are not in our favor," Nunnally said at the time. The court refused the petition without comment.

The Court also denied without comment a petition for Robert Pruett, who is set for execution on Oct. 12. The 38-year-old has spent 15 years on death row for the 1999 slaying of a prison guard in Bee County, where he was already serving a 99-year sentence for a murder in Harris County.

'It's a long shot'

2 other prisoners with Houston ties lost out in their legal battles Monday as well. The Supreme Court denied petitions from Jaime Cole - an Ecuadorian immigrant who killed his estranged wife and her teenage daughter in 2010 - and Garcia White, a fry cook who fatally stabbed twin girls in 1989.

Meanwhile, Shore's counsel continues fighting his case.

There's a request for clemency pending with the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, which Nunnally described as "highly unlikely," as well as a final trial court appeal. As in previous filings, the September appeal in Harris County court hinges on a previously unrecognized brain injury that trial lawyers failed to identify.

"I think it's a long shot," Nunnally said. "However, we always try to keep a positive view."

Source: Houston Chronicle, October 3, 2017

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