"US Supreme Court upholds Texas death convictions," is the title of Michael Graczyk's AP report via the Houston Chronicle.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday upheld death sentences for two Texas inmates, including a man accused of leading a gang responsible for several murders, and refused to reconsider the case of a British grandmother condemned for killing a woman and kidnapping her newborn son.
Dexter Darnell Johnson, 22, was convicted of the June 2006 shooting deaths of a young couple during a carjacking. Investigators said the Houston man was the ringleader of a group responsible for dozens of robberies and at least four homicides.
The justices also upheld the conviction of Max Soffar, 54, for a shooting rampage at a bowling alley that killed three people in 1980.
The court also refused to rehear its rejection of an appeal from Linda Carty, a 51-year-old British grandmother convicted of murdering her neighbor and taking the victim's 4-day-old son in 2001. Carty maintains her innocence, but prosecutors said she was desperate to have child after a miscarriage. The infant was found unharmed.
Carty is among 10 women on death row in Texas, the nation's busiest death penalty state. Thirteen lethal injections have been carried out this year and two more are scheduled for this week.
Execution dates haven't been set for Johnson, Soffar or Carty.
And:
Soffar and Johnson likely have another round of appeals before their executions become imminent, but Carty has nearly exhausted her appeals. Her lawyers sought a rehearing after the justices in early May refused to review her case.
Earlier coverage of the Carty case begins with this post; more on Soffar, here.
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