HOUSTON (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to review an appeal from a 45-year-old Dallas man on Texas death row for killing a supervisor at an Amarillo state prison shoe factory.
Attorneys for Travis Trevino Runnels had appealed after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2016 rejected arguments that he had deficient legal help at his trial for the 2003 slaying of 38-year-old Stanley Wiley at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Clements Unit in Amarillo.
Wiley’s throat was slashed with a knife. He’d worked in the prison system for nearly nine years.
Runnels was serving 70 years for a 1997 aggravated robbery conviction from Dallas and apparently was angry about being assigned janitor duty at the shoe factory. He wanted to work at the prison barber shop.