HENDERSON -- Texas will not seek execution of a second man charged with capital murder in the 1983 deaths of five people abducted from a Kilgore restaurant.

Judge J. Clay Gossett said in court Friday that the state had filed paperwork indicating its intent to waive the death penalty in the case of Darnell Hartsfield.

Hartsfield's cousin, Romeo Pinkerton of Tyler, pleaded guilty in October to his role in the killing of five people taken from a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant.

Pinkerton accepted five life prison terms.

The Longview News-Journal reported that Gossett also ordered Hartsfield's trial be moved from Rusk County to Brazos County. Jury selection begins Sept. 8 in Bryan.

Prosecutors declined to comment on the decision to waive the death penalty, citing a gag order.

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Posted by: On: 5/18/2008

Comment Title: Death Penalty
Fives lives taken just because the gunmen have no value of live. We are becoming like unto our foreign neighbors. No mortals. Each person involved in the death of these should be put to death. My prayer is the one to be tried in Bryan will be shown how justice is to be metered out. It's Bibical.
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