Action by high court sparks appeals

Inmates in Texas and Alabama are hoping for delays in their executions.

LIVINGSTON, Texas (AP) — Lawyers for a convicted murderer set to die today in the nation’s busiest death penalty state hurriedly prepared appeals Wednesday challenging lethal injection after the U.S. Supreme Court announced it would review a Kentucky case on the issue.

An execution by lethal injection was also scheduled today in Alabama, with lawyers for the inmate seeking a delay for the same reason.

As attorneys for death row inmates scramble, legal experts predict it’s unlikely the Supreme Court will impose a national moratorium on lethal injections while it considers the Kentucky case.

Doug Berman, a sentencing expert at Ohio State University’s law school, said he expects some state courts to stop executions while awaiting the outcome of the Kentucky case.

If neither the Texas execution nor the one set for today in Alabama is stopped, he said, “It will be a pretty strong statement that it’s business as usual.”

One possible explanation for the Supreme Court’s decision to accept the Kentucky appeal, yet allow other lethal injection executions to proceed, lies in the different number of votes needed to take a case and block an execution.

Supreme Court rules require just four votes to accept a case but five justices to block an execution.

“It’s possible there is not a fifth vote to grant a stay of execution pending resolution of the case,” said Carol Steiker, a Harvard Law School expert in criminal law.

Every state that uses lethal injections employs the same three drugs, but there are differences among the states in the way the drugs are administered, training of executioners who administer them and dosages, Steiker said.

Texas inmate

Carlton Turner Jr., 28, was condemned for the 1998 slayings of his parents in suburban Dallas. He was 19 when authorities said he shot Carlton Turner Sr., 43, and Tonya Turner, 40, several times in the head. He then bought new clothes and jewelry and continued living in the family’s Irving home as their bodies decomposed.

Turner would be the 27th Texas inmate to die this year by lethal injection. Another execution is scheduled in Texas next week — that of Heliberto Chi, 28, for the 2001 slaying of Armand Paliotta, the manager of a Fort Worth clothing store, during a robbery.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to review Turner’s case, but his attorneys said they were preparing further appeals on the lethal drug issue. Also Tuesday, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, on a 7-0 vote, turned down a request to commute his sentence to life in prison.

In a death row interview last week, Turner acknowledged killing his parents in the home they shared.

“People got killed,” Turner said. “I did it. The only thing that matters is I did what I did.”

Turner testified at his trial that he shot his father in self-defense because his father abused him but recalled little about killing his mother.

“People would never understand,” he said. “I felt my mother couldn’t live without my father. It didn’t make any sense for her to live without him.”

Attorneys for Alabama death row inmate Tommy Arthur, 65, have already asked for a stay based on the Supreme Court’s decision to review lethal injection as a form of execution in Kentucky.

Arthur was sentenced to die for the 1982 murder-for-hire killing of 35-year-old Troy Wicker of Muscle Shoals.

Assistant Attorney General Clay Crenshaw, opposing any delay in the execution, told the Alabama Supreme Court that the U.S. Supreme Court is in the best position to grant a stay because it knows whether or not its opinion in the Kentucky case will have a nationwide impact.