Perry’s office says Legislature has final say on HPV vaccine

AUSTIN (AP) — Gov. Rick Perry’s office put the anti-cancer vaccine debate in lawmakers’ hands on Wednesday, saying they have the power to trump the mandate he issued last week.

Lawmakers are welcome to try to pass legislation that would bar any inoculation requirement for schoolgirls, said Perry spokesman Robert Black.

The governor could then veto that measure, but lawmakers would have the final say if the Legislature were still in session and two-thirds of both the House and Senate voted to override it, Black said.

This is the first time that the governor’s office has acknowledged that the Legislature has the power to supersede his mandate. It sets up a difficult vote for lawmakers who have said they support a vaccine requirement but oppose Perry’s action.

Parolee put to death for strangling stepdaughters

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — Condemned killer James Jackson was convinced his execution would allow him to be reunited with his stepdaughters and wife murdered in the same strangling spree 10 years ago.

Jackson, 47, insisted he didn’t kill Sonceria “Sonnie” Mayes, 19, and her sister Ericka, 18, at the Harris County apartment they shared with Jackson and his wife, Sharon, 39. Sharon Jackson, the girls’ mother, also was strangled.

A Harris County jury didn’t believe him, convicted him of capital murder and sentenced him to death for his stepdaughters’ strangulations.

On Wednesday evening, he received lethal injection, making him the fourth Texas inmate put to death this year.

Man sentenced to death in killing of teen, unborn child

SAN ANTONIO (AP) — A jury gave the death penalty Wednesday to a man convicted of murdering a teenage girl and their unborn child in what prosecutors and an anti-death penalty group believe is the first time someone in the nation’s most active capital punishment state has been sentenced to death for killing an unborn child.

Jurors spent just about three hours deliberating in the case of Adrian Estrada, 23, who showed no emotion when his punishment was read.

Bexar County District Attorney Susan Reed had said she believed it was first time the death penalty has been given to someone convicted of killing an unborn child.