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Taking Baseball Back to its Roots: The Alpine Cowboys 5/25/13
Man on Death Row for 1984 SMU Slaying Loses Appeal 3/7/13
Associated Press
3/7/13
HOUSTON - The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has upheld the death
sentence of a 64-year-old man convicted of the 1984 rape-slaying of a Southern
Methodist University student at her off-campus condo.
The state's highest criminal court, ruling Wednesday in the case of Donald
Bess, rejected 52 claims of error at his 2010 trial, including challenges to
jury selection and instructions, expert testimony and sufficiency of the
evidence.
Bess already was serving life in prison for a 1985 Harris County rape when
DNA testing in 2008 matched him to the long-unsolved murder of Angela Samota.
Samota's sorority sisters from SMU had asked police to re-examine her death.
The DNA technology wasn't available at the time of her slaying.
Bess does not have an execution date and still can appeal to federal courts.