FILE: Ron Lafferty (left) and Ron Yengich, Lafferty's defense attorney, review the official notice proclaiming Yengich as Lafferty's new attorney at 4th District Court in Provo, Sept. 25, 2002. Photo: STUART JOHNSON Deseret News
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A Utah death-row inmate whose double-murder case was featured in the book “Under the Banner of Heaven” is asking an appeals court to hear his case again.
The Deseret News reports the request for the full 10th Circuit Court of Appeals to hear Ron Lafferty’s case comes a month after a three-judge panel rejected the argument that he wasn’t mentally competent to stand trial in 1996.
After that decision, Utah officials said Lafferty could be months away from becoming the first American executed by firing squad in nearly a decade.
He chose that option when he was sentenced.
Lafferty was convicted in the 1984 deaths of his sister-in-law and her baby daughter. He claimed the killings carried out with his brother were directed by God because of the victim’s resistance to his beliefs in polygamy.
___
Information from: Deseret News, http://www.deseretnews.com