Associated Press
AUSTIN, Texas — Death row inmate Robert Pruett has lost an appeal at the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
Pruett is sentenced to die for the 1999 slaying of a Texas corrections officer. The state’s highest criminal court on Wednesday upheld a lower court’s finding that the results of palm print and DNA tests asked by the 35-year-old inmate are inconclusive.
Pruett was set to die last May but received a reprieve to appeal his trial-court ruling that the testing outcome wouldn’t have changed the jury verdict. He awaits lethal injection for the fatal stabbing of Dan Nagle, a corrections officer at the McDonnell Unit near Beeville where Pruett already was serving 99 years for a Harris County slaying.
Evidence showed Pruett was angry about a disciplinary report from Nagle.