WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to grant a last-minute reprieve for a Florida inmate set to be executed in the 1985 killing of his estranged wife and her young son.
The justices Wednesday evening turned down an appeal for 63-year-old John Ruthell Henry. The Tampa-area man is scheduled to be given a lethal injection later Wednesday. The court rejected Henry’s argument that he may be too mentally incompetent for execution.
Henry was convicted of fatally stabbing Suzanne Henry at her home and then killing her 5-year-old son, whose body was found in a neighboring county. Henry had been paroled two years earlier after serving time for the slaying of his previous wife.
It would be the third U.S. execution in less than 24 hours since a botched April lethal injection in Oklahoma.
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