a US Supreme Court decision ensures the longest-serving prisoner...

a US Supreme Court decision ensures the longest-serving prisoner on Texas death row, after 31 years, is no nearer to execution. Justices remanded the case of 52-year-old Ronald Chambers to a lower federal appeals court. That's in line with a ruling last week in another Texas death row case, in which justices ruled 5-to-4 improper questions were used by jurors to decide a death sentence.
The questions used by a Dallas County jury that sentenced Chambers to die were the same as ones ruled invalid last week. That means today's ruling wasn't unexpected. Under the discredited instructions, the Supreme Court found jurors weren't allowed to give sufficient weight to factors that might cause them to impose a life sentence rather than death. Chambers was sentenced to death for the abduction and fatal shooting of Texas Tech student Mike McMahan during a 1975 Dallas carjacking in Dallas.