Texas inmate scheduled for execution for 2005 triple murder

DALLAS -- A man found guilty of fatally shooting three people during a 2005 attempted robbery at a rural Texas home is scheduled to be executed Wednesday, a week after the other man convicted in the killings was put to death.

Ker’Sean Ramey, 41, is set to die by lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville. He would be the sixth person executed so far this year in Texas, with three more scheduled.

A jury convicted Ramey of capital murder and sentenced him to death over the shootings of Samuel Roberts, 24, Tiffani Peacock, 18, and Celso Lopez, 38, in the home they shared in the small city of Edna, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) southwest of Houston.

Ramey and LeJames Norman believed there was cocaine in the house and hoped to steal it, according to court records. They found none and killed the three victims, who lived across the street from Norman.

Norman was put to death Sept. 16, also in Huntsville. He had no last words, and no relatives or friends of the victims witnessed that execution.

Attorneys for Ramey filed a final appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court arguing that there was no physical evidence linking him to the killings and that jurors never heard about how he suffered physical abuse as a child and grew up in poverty.

Prosecutors have told lower courts that Ramey did not present any issues that would merit reconsidering the conviction.

About a year after testifying at Ramey's trial, Norman pleaded guilty to capital murder and was sentenced to death by a jury.

Norman testified that both he and Ramey shot the victims. Lopez was shot four times, including three in the back of his head; Peacock was shot twice in the head; and Roberts was shot five times in the chest, neck and head.

During the trial, Ramey's attorneys blamed the shootings on Norman.