HOUSTON (AP) — Texas’ highest criminal court has upheld a former North Texas justice of the peace’s conviction and death sentence for killing a district attorney’s wife in what prosecutors said was a revenge plot that left three people dead.
Eric Williams argued to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals that there were 40 errors at his December 2014 trial for the slaying of Cynthia McLelland. She and her husband, Kaufman County District Attorney Mike McLelland, were killed in their home east of Dallas in 2013.
Williams has been charged but not tried for the deaths of Mike McLelland and prosecutor Mark Hasse. Hasse was fatally shot two months earlier outside the Kaufman County courthouse.
Williams’ wife, Kim, pleaded guilty to her role in the slayings. She’s serving 40 years in prison.