12 Texas Death Row Inmates Lose At Supreme Court

HOUSTON (AP) – A dozen condemned Texas inmates lost appeals today before the U-S Supreme Court, moving them closer to execution.

Among those was Alvin Kelly, an East Texas man scheduled for execution next week in the 1984 death of a 22-month-old boy in a shooting near Longview that also left the boy’s parents dead.

The 57-year-old Kelly faces lethal injection October 14th, the first of six convicted killers set to die this month in the nation’s most active death penalty state.

Also losing today was Chelsea Richardson, a 24-year-old who is among 10 women on death row in Texas. She was convicted for her involvement in the December 2003 slayings of her boyfriend’s parents, Rick and Suzanna Wamsley, at their home in Mansfield, near Fort Worth.

Three inmates whose scheduled executions were stopped at the last moment with court-ordered reprieves lost their appeals. They include Curtis Moore, convicted of killing three people in Fort Worth; Jose Rivera, condemned for the strangling of a 3-year-old boy in Brownsville; and Kenneth Morris, convicted of killing a Houston man during a home burglary.

Moore was the only inmate besides Kelly with an execution date. Moore faces lethal injection in January.

(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)