HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — A Texas man whose lawyers said was mentally ill and incompetent for execution is headed to the death chamber for killing a 12-year-old girl more than a decade ago after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an 11th-hour appeal.
Forty-four-year-old Jonathan Green was sentenced to death for the abduction, rape and strangling of Christina Neal, whose body was found at his home in June 2000. Neal's family lived across a highway from Green in Dobbin, about 45 miles northwest of Houston.
It appeared the Supreme Court cleared the way for his execution earlier Wednesday when it rejected an appeal from his attorneys just as the window for the lethal injection opened at 6 p.m. However, the punishment was delayed Wednesday night by another appeal that finally was refused less than two hours before the midnight expiration of the death warrant neared.
