DEATH ROW INMATE LOSES APPEAL

TALLAHASSEE (AP) Walter Steinhorst, who blames a friend for talking
him into a 1977 marijuanasmuggling venture that led to four shootings and
sent him to Death Row, lost a U.S. Supreme Court appeal Monday.

It was the second setback this year for Steinhorst, convicted of the
socalled Sandy Creek murders of four people who stumbled across the group
ferrying marijuana ashore from a fishing boat near Panama City.

The state Supreme Court rejected an appeal in June, and the U.S. Supreme
Court refused Monday to hear an appeal.

At 66, Steinhorst is not the oldest man on Death Row. William Cruse Jr.,
sentenced to the electric chair for a Brevard County slaying, is 70.

Nor has Steinhorst been on death row the longest. He is one of about a
dozen inmates with sentences pending for two decades or more.

The longestserving, Gary Eldon Alvord, 50, was sentenced in 1974 for
strangling three Hillsborough County women.

But Steinhorst is nearly blind and is confined to a wheelchair by four
strokes.

The U.S. Supreme Court did not comment on its refusal to review the case.
Steinhorst's attorney, Stephen Alexander, did not return calls.

Alexander said after the state Supreme Court defeat he doubted Steinhorst
would face a death warrant because he probably had little time to live
anyway.

Steinhorst was convicted of killing four people who drove up in a pickup
truck as he acted as a lookout for the group unloading marijuana at Sandy
Creek in January 1977.

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Copyright (c) 1997 The Miami Herald