Supreme Court rejects 11th-hour death sentence appeal for Jonathan Green

The US Supreme Court rejected an 11th-hour appeal to spare the life of a Texas man executed Wednesday night for killing a 12-year-old girl more than a decade ago.

Attorneys for Jonathan Green — convicted in July 2002 of capital murder in the abduction, rape and strangling of Christina Neal, according to the Associated Press — had argued that he was incompetent for execution.

Green’s execution was blocked Monday when a federal judge ruled that due process was violated in Green’s competency hearing, KUT News reported.

The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit overturned that decision.

On Wednesday, an 11th-hour appeal — launched after the 6 p.m. window for the execution by lethal injection opened — delayed proceedings further.

However that appeal that finally was refused less than two hours before the midnight expiration of the death warrant, according to a report on CBS.

Neal's body was found at Green's home in June 2000. Neal lived with her family across a highway from Green in Dobbin, about 45 miles northwest of Houston, according to the AP.

Green's attorneys had submitted more than 200 pages of medical records, according to the Wall Street Journal. 

Despite being diagnosed as having "undifferentiated schizophrenia," the Supreme Court justices said those records didn’t demonstrate that he lacked rational understanding that he was to be executed for the Neal's death.

Green was the 10th Texas inmate to die this year.