The Latest: Texas inmate set to die Thursday loses appeal

HUNTSVILLE, Texas – The Latest on the execution of Texas prisoner Terry Edwards scheduled for Thursday (all times local):

6:30 p.m.

A federal appeals court has refused to halt this week’s execution of Texas death row inmate Terry Edwards.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a request from Edwards’ attorneys to stop the scheduled Thursday evening lethal injection and reopen his case so they can pursue arguments that a court-appointed attorney in earlier stages of his appeals was deficient and abandoned him. Lawyers insist Edwards was not the gunman who killed two people at a Dallas-area Subway sandwich shop during a robbery in 2002.

The appeals court ruled late Wednesday that the claims Edwards’ attorneys are raising are not supported in their arguments and have been filed far too late in the process. The court says attorneys were able to delay punishments set for last May and again in October and waited until Jan. 10 to file their most recent appeal.

Edwards’ lawyers had said they would take their arguments to the U.S. Supreme Court if they lost at the 5th Circuit.

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3:35 p.m.

Terry Edwards was seen holding a gun when fleeing from a suburban Dallas Subway sandwich shop after a robbery where two workers were fatally shot. He was spotted ditching the weapon in a trash can nearby and was carrying more than $3,000 in a Subway bag when he was arrested a short time later.

Attorneys for the 43-year-old Edwards say he didn’t do the 2002 shootings and that he had poor legal help at his trial and in earlier appeals. They want a federal court to stop his lethal injection set for Thursday evening. Evidence showed he worked at the store but was fired several weeks earlier for stealing from the cash register.

Edwards has acknowledged being in the Subway in Balch Springs but blamed the shootings on a cousin.