Texas executes death-row prisoner over 2005 triple killing

A man found guilty of fatally shooting three people during a 2005 attempted robbery at a rural Texas home was executed Wednesday, a week after the other man convicted in the killings was put to death.

Ker’Sean Ramey, 41, died by lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville. He is the sixth person executed so far this year in Texas, with three more people scheduled over the next two months.

A jury convicted Ramey of capital murder and sentenced him to death over the shootings of Samuel Roberts, 24, Tiffani Peacock, 18, and Celso Lopez, 38, in the home they shared in the small city of Edna, about 100 miles (160km) south-west of Houston.

Ramey and LeJames Norman believed there was cocaine in the house and hoped to steal it, according to court records. They found none and killed the three victims, who lived across the street from Norman.

Norman was put to death on 16 September, also in Huntsville. He had no last words, and no relatives or friends of the victims witnessed that execution.

The US supreme court rejected a final appeal from Ramey hours before Wednesday’s execution.

Ramey’s attorneys had argued that jurors never heard about how he suffered physical abuse as a child and grew up in poverty. State prosecutors told the court the appeal was “meritless” and argued that evidence showed Ramey had “an escalating pattern of criminal behavior”.

Norman testified at Ramey’s trial nearly two years before being sentenced to death by a jury after pleading guilty to capital murder. He testified that he and Ramey shot the victims. Ramey’s attorneys blamed the shootings on Norman.

Ramey’s former girlfriend testified that she was with him when he threw two pistols into a lake after the killings, and that he told her in detail about his involvement.

Lopez was shot four times, including in the back of the head; Peacock was shot twice in the head; and Roberts was shot five times in the chest, neck and head.