The state's highest criminal appeals court has blocked the scheduled execution this week of a 40-year-old man convicted of fatally shooting a 5-year-old boy sleeping with his mother at a Corpus Christi apartment 20 years ago.
Larry Hatten had ordered no appeals be filed to stop his scheduled Wednesday evening lethal injection in Huntsville for the slaying of Isaac Jackson.
But the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has given him a reprieve to resolve a 1997 filing with his trial court in Nueces County. The judges said Monday in a three-page ruling that the filing never was decided by the trial court and was never properly forwarded to the appeals court.
The appeals court has given the trial court six months to resolve the claims in the in filing.
