AUSTIN, Texas, Dec. 28 (UPI) -- Two men on death row in Texas have lost federal appeals of their sentences.
Both decisions were handed down Tuesday by three-judge panels of the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.
In one case, the court denied a petition for habeas corpus to Robert Lynn Pruett, who was sentenced to death for the 1999 murder of a prison guard who refused to let him take his lunch to the recreation yard. Pruett denied killing Daniel Nagle.
Pruett was serving a 99-year sentence for helping his father and brother kill a neighbor when he was 16.
Another panel refused to reverse the sentence given Bobby Lee Hines in 1992. Hines' lawyers argued he is retarded, but the judges ruled he does not meet the standards set by the U.S. Supreme Court in its ruling that retarded convicts cannot be executed.
