(September 4, 2008)—A Waco district court jury deliberated for about three hours Thursday before deciding to send convicted killer Billie Wayne Coble, 59, back to death row for the 1989 murders of his estranged wife’s parents and brother.

Members of the victims’ family hugged and thanked the jurors after the sentence was returned.

An execution date was not immediately set.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Coble’s original death sentence in August 2007 because the jury that returned it wasn’t fully allowed to consider potentially mitigating evidence about Coble’s troubled childhood, the death of his father, his mother’s nervous breakdown, the years he spent in an orphanage and the trauma he suffered while serving in Vietnam.

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The defense presented that potentially mitigating evidence this week in the sentencing retrial, but the new jury’s decision was the same as the jury’s in 1990 when Coble was convicted in the shooting deaths Robert and Zelda Vicha, and Bobby Vicha, who was a Waco Police Department sergeant.

In closing arguments, prosecutor Crawford Long said Coble is the same person today as he was nearly 20 years ago when he killed Robert, Zelda and Bobby Vicha.

He has “a heart full of scorpions,” Long told jurors.

“He hasn't changed, he's just been restrained."

Defense Attorney Russ Hunt offered no excuse for what his client did, but told jurors prosecutors failed to make the case for a new death sentence.

“The government has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Billy Wayne Coble is not a danger and they can't do that,” he said.

Coble was waiting at the home of his estranged third wife, Karen Vicha, when her daughters returned from school on Aug. 29, 1989.

He handcuffed and tied up her three children and one of their cousins, cut the phone lines and then went down the street to the home of his brother-in-law, Bobby Vicha, whom Coble shot in the neck after a struggle.

Next, Coble went to the home of his estranged wife’s parents and shot both of them to death.

Then, when Karen Vicha arrived home, he handcuffed her, put her in her car, and drove off, assaulting her during the drive.

He was arrested that night after a major manhunt and a brief high-speed chase that ended when the car Coble was driving crashed into a parked vehicle in Bosque County.

(Dallas Cook contributed to this story)