Lawyers make last bid for man convicted in Panhandle slayings
March 15, 2010
By ALLAN TURNER
Houston Chronicle
With their client's execution for a triple homicide set for next week, Henry Skinner's lawyers are making a last bid to have so-far unexamined evidence - bloody knives, a rape kit, fingernail scrapings - subjected to DNA testing.
But attorneys for the prosecutor filed paperwork Monday asking U.S. Supreme Court justices not to review the case, arguing that such testing could not prove innocence.
The case of Skinner, set to die March 24 for the 1993 Pampa murders of his girlfriend, Twila Busby, and her two adult sons, has created furor among death penalty opponents who argue that Skinner was railroaded to death row.
Earlier DNA testing revealed clothing Skinner wore the night of the killings was caked with the blood of Busby and her older son. Testing of hair in Busby's hand, done at the insistence of a Chicago journalism professor, was positive for Skinner's DNA.
