HOUSTON (AP) — Texas death row is getting its first inmate in 2015, breaking a rare 10-month hiatus in death sentences imposed by juries in the nation's most active capital punishment state.

A Brazos County jury decided after seven hours of deliberation Wednesday that 22-year-old Gabriel Hall should be put to put to death for an attack that left a 68-year-old man dead and his wife injured at the couple's home in College Station.

It's the first death sentence in Texas since last December.

With their decision, jurors in the county about 100 miles northwest of Houston rejected the option of sending Hall to prison with a life sentence with no chance of parole. That was the outcome in three other Texas capital cases this year where the death penalty was a possibility.

 

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