AUSTIN, Texas -- The highest criminal court in Texas has denied appeals from two death row inmates, including a hit man in a murder-for-hire plot and another man convicted of killing his wife. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Wednesday affirmed the convictions and death sentences of John Steven Gardner and Howard Paul Guidry. Guidry was convicted in 1997 for the shooting death of 33-year-old Farah Fratta in Harris County. Fratta’s husband, former Houston public safety officer Robert Fratta, masterminded the plot to have his wife killed. Gardner was convicted of murdering his wife, Tammy, in her Collin County home, shortly before their divorce was to become final in 2005.
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