HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) -- The execution of a 67-year-old man who was convicted of killing four men more than three decades ago is set to proceed on Wednesday evening after the U.S. Supreme Court denied a last-day appeal to halt the lethal injection.
Lester Bower Jr. would be the oldest prisoner executed in the most active death penalty state since the punishment was reinstated in 1982.
If the execution goes ahead, Bower would be the eighth inmate given a lethal dose of pentobarbital this year in Texas, which carries out capital punishment more than any other state.
The Supreme Court declined in March to review Bower's case -- although three justices, Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor, said they would have thrown out his death sentence. But about three hours before he was to be taken to the death chamber, the Supreme Court denied his renewed late appeal.
Bower initially lied to his wife, who didn't want him to buy the plane, and to investigators who tracked him down from calls made to Good that were charged to Bower's company-issued telephone credit card. He eventually acknowledged being at the ranch, but said the victims were alive and well when he left with the disassembled plane that he properly bought, but could produce no receipt. His attorneys suggested years later that other men involved in a drug deal gone bad were responsible for the shootings.
Bower is nearly 1 1/2 years older than William Chappell, who was executed at age 66 in Texas in 2002. Nationally, a 74-year-old prisoner was put to death in Alabama in 2004. Only one other executed prisoner in Texas served more time on death row than Bower, who is 10th in seniority among Texas' 265 condemned inmates.