HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) – A Texas death row inmate once described by a prosecutor as having “a heart full of scorpions” faces execution for killing his estranged wife’s parents and her brother, who was a police officer.
Billie Wayne Coble is scheduled to receive lethal injection Thursday evening. He was condemned for the August 1989 shooting deaths of Robert and Zelda Vicha and their son, Bobby Vicha, at their homes in Axtell, northeast of Waco.
The 70-year-old Coble would be the third inmate put to death this year in the U.S. and the second in Texas, the nation’s busiest capital punishment state.
His attorneys have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to delay the execution, arguing Coble’s original trial lawyers were negligent for conceding his guilt.
