HOUSTON (AP) - Two men on death row for separate slayings in the Dallas-Fort Worth area lost appeals Tuesday before the U.S. Supreme Court.
The justices refused without comment to review the cases of Joseph Lave, 52, and Juan Segundo, 54.
Lave was condemned for a November 1992 robbery at a suburban Dallas sporting goods store where two 18-year-old employees - Justin Marquart and Frederick Banzhaf - were fatally bludgeoned with a hammer and nearly decapitated. He received a life prison term for Banzhaf’s killing at the store in Richardson and a death sentence for Marquart’s slaying.
Segundo was arrested nearly 19 years after an 11-year-old Fort Worth girl was raped and strangled in her home in 1986. A DNA match in a national database in 2005 tied Segundo to the slaying of Vanessa Villa.
Neither Lave nor Segundo has an execution date.
Lave was set to die in 2007 but the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office withdrew his execution date after prosecutors discovered evidence that had not been turned over to his lawyers.
The following year, the Supreme Court returned Lave’s case to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals for additional review after lawyers argued his trial attorneys weren’t able to cross-examine a co-defendant and challenge damaging statements from him.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year rejected Lave’s appeal that contended the judgment against him was the result of prosecutorial fraud and misconduct. That is the appeal the high court refused to review Tuesday.
In Segundo’s case, DNA evidence also linked him to the rapes and strangling of two women in the Fort Worth area in 1994 and 1995.
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This story has been corrected to show the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review the cases Tuesday, not Monday.
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