Source:
APWASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court ruled against an Alabama death row inmate today, declaring that he missed a deadline for challenging his conviction.
Alabama officials had asked the justices to take the case of Daniel Siebert, who is sentenced to death for killing a Talledega woman during a robbery in February 1986.
In a separate murder case, Siebert was scheduled to have been executed on October 25th, but a federal appeals court in Atlanta temporarily blocked the execution.
In the case the justices decided Alabama courts ruled that Siebert had missed a deadline for challenging his conviction at the state level in the killing of Linda Ann Jarman.
Siebert was also convicted in the strangulation deaths of Jarman's next-door neighbor, Sherri Weathers, and Weathers' two young sons. Weathers was a student at the Alabama School for the Deaf and had been dating Siebert. Jarman was killed the same night.
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The Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 sets a one-year deadline for filing such petitions but the deadline is figured from the end of his direct state appeal.
Since the law was enacted after his conviction, his deadline was one year after the law was enacted in 1996. That still meant that his federal habeas petition was filed four years late.
More on the "The Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996" here.
http://www.fas.org/irp/crs/96-499.htm