HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) – The Latest on Texas Execution (all times local):
10:30 a.m.
The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles has rejected a clemency petition from death row inmate Robert Pruett.
Pruett is scheduled to die Thursday evening for the 1999 killing of a Texas corrections officer, Daniel Nagle.
Attorneys for the 38-year-old inmate asked the board to recommend to Gov. Greg Abbott that Pruett be given a 120-day reprieve and that his death sentence be commuted to life in prison.
Parole board spokesman Raymond Estrada says the six-member panel unanimously voted Wednesday not to recommend clemency.
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12:05 a.m.
Attorneys for an inmate convicted in a prison guard’s death are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to halt his scheduled execution.
They want justices to review whether lower courts properly denied a federal civil rights lawsuit that sought additional DNA testing in Robert Pruett’s case and whether a prisoner who claims actual innocence, as Pruett does, can be put to death.
The execution is set for Thursday.
The 38-year-old Pruett was already serving 99 years for a neighbor’s killing when he was convicted in the 1999 death of corrections officer Daniel Nagle at a prison southeast of San Antonio. Nagle was stabbed repeatedly with a metal rod and an autopsy showed the assault caused a heart attack that killed him.
Pruett would be the sixth Texas prisoner executed this year.