HOUSTON (AP) - A federal appeals court has rejected an appeal from a Houston police officer’s convicted killer whose attorneys argued the presence of uniformed officers during his trial prevented him from receiving a fair trial.
Lawyers for 50-year-old death row inmate Shelton Jones told the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that nearly two dozen officers who attended Jones’ trial daily implied to jurors that they must convict him of fatally shooting Houston Sgt. Bruno Soboleski. He was shot in 1991 after stopping to question Jones and another man standing in the middle of a Houston intersection.
In another Houston police shooting case, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has refused an appeal from 60-year-old Robert Jennings, on death row for the 1988 slaying of vice officer Elston Howard.
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