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Texas Executes Oldest Death-Row Inmate

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

After Supreme Court turns down appeal.

Texas executed a 67-year-old man convicted of killing four men more than three decades ago. On Wednesday evening, Lester Bower Jr. became the oldest man executed in the state since it resumed capital punishment in 1982. Bower, who had maintained his innocence, was convicted of fatally shooting four men in 1983 at an airport hangar at a North Texas ranch. The Supreme Court rejected a last-ditch effort from Bower’s lawyer, who argued that trial jurors didn’t have the opportunity to consider in punishment deliberations that Bower had no criminal record. In March, the high court turned down his case despite three justices stating they would have thrown out his death sentence. Bower was the eighth inmate Texas has put to death this year.

Read it at NBC Dallas-Fort Worth