Texas Death Row inmate Cleve Foster won his third reprieve Tuesday from the United States Supreme Court in one year, according to the office of Wichita Falls native Greg Abbott.
Abbott is the Texas Attorney General.
The decision in the Foster case may affect death penalty cases in Wichita Falls as the entire state will be bound by whatever ruling the United States Supreme Court makes.
On one previous occasion Foster had completed his last meal and was en route to the death gurney when a last second reprieve from the High Court saved him.
On another occasion he was less than an hour away from death's door when he received a delay.
This latest delay marks the third in 2011, the Appeals courts have stepped in to prevent his execution.
There is no time limit within which the United States Supreme Court must announce whether it will reverse Foster's conviction and send him back for a new jury trial or do something else with the case.
For the time being though, Foster will live to breathe another day. The wheels of the death machinery have ground to a halt on Death Row near Huntsville, Texas.
Foster has always claimed he was passed out and incapacitated when his roommate Sheldon Ward raped and murdered Sudanese immigrant Mary Pal of Fort Worth in their apartment.
Ward was convicted and sentenced to the death penalty by lethal injection. Fate intervened through cancer though and Ward died from a stroke reportedly caused by the grim disease.
Ward claimed at his trial that the sex was consensual with Mary Pal.
Some supporters of Foster claim Ward wrote a notarized statement absolving Foster of complicity in the murder.
DNA from both Ward and Foster was found inside the victim's body which was found in a ditch not too far from a Tarrant County road.
A murder gun was found in the apartment Foster and Ward shared.
Detectives at the jury trial testified the position of her body indicated she had been murdered in one location and then transported to the ditch. They inferred the smallish Ward would've needed Foster's help to move the body.
Cleve Foster was a sergeant and served in Iraq before returning to the United States and working as an Army recruiter.
He even recruited Ward into the Army.
According to the Attorney General's Office,the same gun used in the murder of Mary Pal was also used in the murder of a Texas Tech co-ed only weeks before the murder of the Fort Worth woman.
Although suspected in the murder of the Tech student, Foster was never convicted.
Texas leads the nation in excecutions.
When the question was asked of Presidential candidate Rick Perry if he'd lost any sleep over the executions which had occurred during his time as governor of the Lone Star State he replied no.
He was cheered by the largely Republican crowd at a debate for his answer.
Polls indicate approximately 90% of Republicans favor the death penalty, which might help Perry in the upcoming Republican primaries.
Democrats were fairly evenly divided on ths issue of the death penalty, according to the same poll.
While more than 200 Death Row inmates have been executed under Perry's watch, Cleve Foster seems to be leading a charmed existence as he once again dodged a bullet.
It will be interesting to see what happens ultimately in the Foster case which appears to gain more national interest each time a delay is granted.
It has been a busy week for capital murders as Troy Davis in Georgia awaited word late Wednesday as to whether the United States Supreme Court would order a stay in his high profile case.
Although his execution was set for 7 p.m. Eastern time, Georgia authorities waited for four hours for the Supreme Court to decide whether or not to stay Davis' execution for a fourth time. He died at 11:08 p.m.
A large crowd of Davis supporters waited outside the prison when word came the Supreme Court had decided against granting a stay of Davis execution.
Defense attorney Barry Scheck claimed Wednesday night that seven of nine eyewitnesses against Davis had recanted their testimony since the trial.
Davis was convicted of capital murder for the 1989 slaying of a Georgia police officer.
That was the same year the last Wichita Falls police officer Tommy Collins was slain in the line of duty.
His daughter Vicki Collins serves as an investigator in the District Attorney's Office in Wichita Falls.
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