PHOENIX (AP) — Lawyers for an Arizona death row inmate scheduled to be executed on Nov. 16 have filed a recent appeal.
Murray Hooper’s attorneys filed one other petition for post-conviction relief Monday in Maricopa County Superior Court, saying “newly discovered material facts” have been discovered within the case and the 76-year-old inmate must be entitled to a recent trial.
Hooper’s defense team also filed a petition in September requesting post-conviction DNA and other forensic testing.
They said Hooper was convicted and sentenced on unreliable witness testimony, no physical evidence links him to the crime and an evaluation of key fingerprint and DNA evidence was scientifically unavailable on the time of his trial.
Hooper and two co-defendants were sentenced to death in 1982 for the murders of William “Pat” Redmond and his mother-in-law, Helen Phelps, during a house robbery in Phoenix on Latest Yr’s Eve 1980.
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Redmond’s wife, Marilyn, was shot in the pinnacle but recovered.
Lawyers for Hooper said Marilyn Redmond’s description of the assailants modified several times before she identified Hooper, who has maintained his innocence within the double slayings.
“Because there is no such thing as a physical or forensic evidence placing Mr. Hooper on the scene, or in Arizona, the unreliability of Mrs. Redmond’s identification calls his conviction into query and demands relief,” Hooper’s attorneys said in the most recent appeal.
The opposite two men convicted within the case died before their sentences might be carried out.
The Arizona Supreme Court ruled last month that the state can move forward with Hooper’s execution.
He can be the third inmate put to death this 12 months after Arizona recently resumed carrying out executions.
There are 111 inmates on Arizona’s death row and 22 have exhausted their appeals, in line with the Attorney General’s Office.
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