Texas Man’s Death Sentence Upheld by Divided Fifth Circuit

A Texas man sentenced to death for murdering a fellow prisoner couldn’t prove he was prejudiced by the ineffective assistance of his counsel at sentencing, despite new mitigating evidence, a divided Fifth Circuit ruled.

The new mitigating evidence isn’t “so compelling” that it outweighs the undisputed aggravating evidence that Anibal Canales Jr. “committed a cold and calculated gang-related murder” and has “a history of threatening and seeking murder,” the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit said Tuesday, affirming the Eastern District of Texas’s ruling.

Caneles, a member of the Texas Mafia prison gang, was convicted by a ...