The Supreme Court says lower courts should look again at an appeal from a Missouri man on death row for killing a woman and her two children 16 years ago.
The justices ruled Tuesday that Mark Christeson deserves the chance to argue that his court-appointed attorneys were ineffective because they missed a 2005 deadline to appeal his conviction in federal court by almost four months.
It is uncommon for someone to be executed without a federal appeals court hearing.
Christeson would have been the 11th man executed in Missouri last year. But the Supreme Court put his execution on hold in October while it considered his appeal.
