Appeal Rejected For Man On Death Row For Killing Fort Worth Girl
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HOUSTON (CBSDFW.COM/AP) — A federal appeals court has refused an appeal from a Texas death row inmate who was arrested nearly 19 years after an 11-year-old Fort Worth girl was raped and strangled in her home.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday rejected claims from 53-year-old Juan Segundo that his lawyers at his 2006 Tarrant County trial were deficient for failing to properly investigate and develop evidence he was intellectually disabled.
Segundo's wife was a family friend of Vanessa Villa, who was found dead in 1986 in her home. On the day she was attacked Vanessa had stayed home instead of going with her mother, brother and little sister to run an errand. When her family returned home, less than an hour later, they found her barely clinging to life.
A DNA match in a national database nearly two decades later tied Segundo to her slaying.
DNA evidence also linked Segundo to the rapes and strangling of two other women in the Fort Worth area in 1994 and 1995.
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