On October 16, 2017, Fratta filed another appeal before the Fifth Circuit.
https://dockets.justia.com/docket/ci...s/ca5/17-70023
On October 16, 2017, Fratta filed another appeal before the Fifth Circuit.
https://dockets.justia.com/docket/ci...s/ca5/17-70023
COA denied today by the 5th Circuit.
http://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions...-70023-CV0.pdf
On June 5, 2018, the Fifth Circuit DENIED Fratta's petition for en banc rehearing.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketP...ntion.Time.pdf
I wonder if the Harris County DA will get warrants for Fratta and Prystash also I'm wondering if she will do them both around the same time.
I am thinking so, probably sometime next year.
Realistic looking at an execution date in the fall 2019. There should be around 10-11 executions next year in Texas. We'll see if Judge Brett Kavanaugh takes his nomination to the US Supreme Court in the coming weeks.
In today's orders, the United States Supreme Court declined to review Fratta's petition for certiorari.
Lower Ct: United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
Case Numbers: (17-70023)
Decision Date: May 1, 2018
Rehearing Denied: June 5, 2018
https://www.supremecourt.gov/search....c/18-6298.html
Former Missouri City cop on death row denied federal appeal
A former Missouri City police officer now on Texas death row lost out on a federal appeal Tuesday, bringing him one step closer to the death chamber.
Robert Fratta was sentenced to death by a Harris County court in 1996 after jurors found him guilty of hiring someone to murder his wife Farah Fratta. The hitman, Joseph Prystash, paid a third man to carry out the killing, according to court records. All three ended up on death row.
Fratta has repeatedly professed his innocence in the slaying over the more than two decades he's spent fighting the case.
"The courts are continuing to deny him justice," said Houston attorney James Rytting, who is representing Fratta in his federal appeals.
The latest appeals include claims about whether old ballistics testing not allowed at trial could now count as new evidence and arguments about whether Fratta was allowed to file his own appeals in tandem with attorneys' filings.
The court on Tuesday night decided the ballistics evidence wasn't new, under either of the two legal standards by which it could be measured.
"Fratta possessed the report at the time of his second trial and he presented to the court, even though it was ultimately ruled inadmissible," the federal appeals court wrote. "Regardless, even assuming that the ballistics report was 'new,' that new evidence is not 'so strong' that it undermines our confidence in the jury's verdict."
After turning down the first two claims, the court did not review the remaining three.
"I think that this is a case of the court ignoring the principal claims that were raised - which are meritorious," Rytting said.
Farah and Robert Fratta were in the midst of a contentious divorce and slated for a child custody hearing less than three weeks after the 34-year-old mother was shot in the head while stepping out of her car.
Robert Fratta was at church at the time of the crime, but investigators immediately zeroed in on him as a prime suspect. Before the slaying, he'd reportedly asked around for a hit man and on the night of the murder he repeatedly retreated to the church office to make phone calls, according to authorities.
Records later showed those calls went to Prystash's girlfriend, who later offered up details to police in exchange for immunity. In the end, police arrested Fratta for planning the slaying, Howard Guidry for carrying it out and Prystash for acting as middleman between the two.
Prosecutors said Prystash set up the killing in exchange for a Jeep.
Although all three men were sent to death row, Guidry and Fratta both saw their initial convictions reversed and bounced back to a lower court.
Now, Guidry, is still fighting his case in state court. Prystash lost out in the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year.
https://www.chron.com/news/houston-t...d-12882564.php
"How do you get drunk on death row?" - Werner Herzog
"When we get fruit, we get the juice and water. I ferment for a week! It tastes like chalk, it's nasty" - Blaine Keith Milam #999558 Texas Death Row
Apologies if this has been posted before, interesting documentary by Werner Herzog, on watching this, he has the charm and capacity to talk himself out of a paper bag...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpsrGbWddfw
I just watched the On Death Row episode on Fratta. Fratta was smug and arrogant but that’s not what sickened me. The amount of people who knew Fratta was trying to have his wife killed and did nothing, including his gym buddy who was interviewed and tried to make himself look like a good person
Thank you for the adventure - Axol
Tried so hard and got so far, but in the end it doesn’t even matter - Linkin Park
Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever. - Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt
I’m going to the ghost McDonalds - Garcello
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