(April 30, 2007)- A US Supreme Court decision Monday ensures the longest-serving prisoner on Texas death row, after 31 years, is no nearer to execution.

Justices remanded the case of 52-year-old Ronald Chambers to a lower federal appeals court.

That's in line with a ruling last week in another Texas death row case, in which justices ruled 5-4 that improper questions were used by jurors to decide a death sentence.

The questions used by a Dallas County jury that sentenced Chambers to die were the same as ones ruled invalid last week.

That means Monday’s ruling wasn't unexpected.

Under the discredited instructions, the Supreme Court found jurors weren't allowed to give sufficient weight to factors that might cause them to impose a life sentence rather than death.

Chambers was sentenced to death for the abduction and fatal shooting of Texas Tech student Mike McMahan during a 1975 carjacking in Dallas.

In another Texas case, the high court Monday refused to review the conviction of John Amador.

He was sent to death row for the 1994 robbery and fatal shooting of San Antonio taxi driver Reza "Ray" Ayari.

A friend riding with Ayari also was shot but survived her wounds and identified Amador as the gunman.

In a third Texas death row case, justices Monday accepted for argument this fall the conviction of Jose Ernesto Medellin .

The Mexican national was sent to death row in 1994 for the rapes and killings the year before of two teenage girls in Houston.

Medellin contends he was denied legal help as a foreigner under a 1963 treaty.

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