COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) -- The state Supreme Court has ruled a South Carolina prisoner sent to death row for killing his cellmate can give up all his appeals.
The justices ruled unanimously Monday that 35-year-old Jeffrey Motts is competent to ask that the state go ahead and put him to death.
Authorities say Motts strangled a fellow inmate at Perry Correctional Institution in Greenville County with a bedsheet in April 2006, then dragged his body to the exercise yard, kicked it and said: "This is what snitches get."
Motts was already serving two life sentences for killing his great-aunt and her husband in their Spartanburg County home in 1995 to get money for crack cocaine.
Motts has written the state Supreme Court at least twice asking the justices to let him die.
(Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
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