HUNTSVILLE, Texas — A black man convicted of a double murder in Texas was at least temporarily spared from lethal injection when the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review his lawyers' claims that race played an improper role in his sentencing.
The court on Thursday halted the execution for 47-year-old Duane Buck two hours into a six-hour window when he could have been taken to the death chamber. Texas officials did not move forward with the punishment while legal issues were pending.
Buck was sentenced to death for the July 1995 fatal shootings of his ex-girlfriend and a man in her apartment.
His attorneys had asked the Supreme Court and Texas Gov. Rick Perry to halt the execution because of a psychologist's testimony that black people were more likely to commit violence.
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