Texas executes inmate for fatally shooting 3 teens in 1998

By JUAN A. LOZANO and MICHAEL GRACZYK
Associated Press

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — Texas has executed an inmate convicted of killing three teenagers while they slept in a Texas Panhandle home more than 25 years ago. John Balentine’s attorneys had argued his trial and death sentence were marred by racial bias. He received a lethal injection Wednesday evening at the state penitentiary in Huntsville. His execution was carried out after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to stop it and following a decision earlier Wednesday by a Texas appeals court that reinstated the execution order. Fifty-four-year-old Balentine was condemned for the January 1998 shooting deaths of two 15-year-olds and a 17-year-old at a home in Amarillo. He was the third inmate in Texas and the sixth in the U.S. to be put to death this year.