This photo provided by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice shows Robert Fratta, former suburban Houston police officer on death row for hiring a hitman to kill his estranged wife in 1994. In a ruling late Tuesday, May 1, 2018, Fratta lost an appeal moving him a step closer to execution.
This undated photo provided by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice shows William Rayford, who is scheduled for execution Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2018, for the 1999 killing of his ex-girlfriend Carol Lynn Thomas Hall in Dallas. This undated photo provided by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice shows William Rayford, who is scheduled for execution Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2018, for the 1999 killing of his ex-girlfriend Carol Lynn Thomas Hall in Dallas.
This undated photo provided by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice shows William Rayford, who is scheduled for execution Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2018, for the 1999 killing of his ex-girlfriend Carol Lynn Thomas Hall in Dallas. less This undated photo provided by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice shows William Rayford, who is scheduled for execution Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2018, for the 1999 killing of his ex-girlfriend Carol Lynn Thomas ... more HUNTSVILLE, Texas - Carol Lynn Thomas Hall knew William Rayford had spent time in prison for killing his estranged wife but defended her own relationship with him, telling relatives she believed it was her Christian duty to give the parolee a second chance.
Earlier this year I started to correspond with Caleb Mason concerning his effort to preserve a sentence imposed below a federal mandatory minimum in the face of a government appeal. I suggested to Caleb that he write up an account of the case and his pitch for amicus help.
Editor's note: Should someone wearing a badge have the power to relieve a suspected drug dealer of his Maserati on the spot without giving him an opportunity to flee or liquidate and launder his assets? Known as civil asset forfeiture, this practice might sound like a wise policy. But lawmakers on both sides of the aisle in Congress are challenging the Trump administration's embrace of the arrangement, which strips billions of dollars a year from Americans - who often have not been charged with a crime.
This photo provided by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice shows John William King. A federal appeals court has approved additional review of a claim from King, the condemned killer insisting he's innocent of the notorious slaying nearly 20 years ago of a black man chained to the back of a pickup truck and dragged along a bumpy rural East Texas road.
This undated photo provided by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice shows TaiChin Preyor. Texas' highest criminal court and a federal judge have refused to stop this week's scheduled execution of Preyor, the convicted killer of a woman in San Antonio in 2004.
This undated photo provided by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice shows inmate Bobby Moore. The U.S. Supreme Court this week examines whether the nation's busiest state for capital punishment is trying to put to death a convicted killer who's intellectually disabled, which would make him ineligible for execution under the court's current guidance.