June 21, 1999
Web posted at: 2:21 p.m. EDT (1821 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Supreme Court on Monday narrowly upheld the sentence of the first person condemned to die under a 1994 federal death penalty law.

The justices ruled that jury instructions in a federal death penalty case do not have to spell out in advance the consequences of a deadlock on sentencing.

By a 5-4 vote, the high court ruled the death sentence was valid for Louis Jones. He was convicted for the 1995 murder of Tracie Joy McBride, a 19-year-old Army private stationed in San Angelo, Texas.

Jones, who had retired from the Army in 1993 after a 22-year career, confessed to abducting McBride and taking her to his home in San Angelo. The case became a federal matter because McBride was abducted from a military base laundry room.

He told authorities he later took her to an isolated area about 20 miles from the city and beat her to death with a tire iron. Jones led authorities to her body.

A federal jury in Texas convicted Jones of murder, and sentenced him to death. A U.S. appeals court upheld both the conviction and sentence under the Federal Death Penalty Act of 1994.

Justice Clarence Thomas said in the court's majority opinion that the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment does not require that the jury be instructed about the consequences of their failure to agree on a death sentence.

In other action Monday, the Supreme Court:

• Agreed to decide whether a federal law intended to shield children from sex-oriented cable TV networks violates the free-speech rights of channels such as Playboy TV. The justices said they will review the case during the next term in the autumn.
  
  
• Allowed prosecutors to continue offering leniency for testimony of cooperating witnesses. The high court rejected without comment or dissent the argument that federal prosecutors commit bribery by granting leniency to witnesses in exchange for testimony.
  
  
• Determined that limits set in the Prison Litigation Reform Act for attorney-fee awards to inmates suing over prison conditions apply only to legal work performed after it took effect in 1996.
  
  
• Said police generally do not need a warrant to search a car they have reason to believe is carrying illegal drugs. The court ruled that a search warrant is not required even if police had plenty of time to get one after receiving a tip that a car might be carrying drugs.
  
  
• Temporarily stopped the dismantling of a special public school district for disabled children in a New York community of ultra-Orthodox Jews. The justices granted an emergency request by state officials to postpone the effect of a ruling by New York's highest court. The New York court had ruled that the creation of the special district violated the U.S. Constitution's separation of church and state.
  
  
• Agreed to use an Arizona drug case to decide whether some criminal convictions must be overturned because of jury-selection errors. The court will hear an appeal in which prosecutors say a drug-trafficking conviction was valid even though the judge failed to remove a potential juror who showed signs of bias.
  
  
• Ruled that an Alabama county can collect an occupational fee from two federal judges who work there. By a 7-2 vote, the justices overturned a federal appeals court ruling that had deemed the fee unconstitutional when applied to the two judges.
  
  

Correspondent Charles Bierbauer, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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