Federal Death Penalty Trial Starts for Ailing Inmate

A death penalty trial has started for an ailing man charged with an attack at a federal prison hospital in Missouri that killed one fellow inmate and injured another.

The Springfield News-Leader reports that 61-year-old Ulysses Jones Jr. went on trial last week on charges of using a makeshift knife to kill 38-year-old Timothy Baker as he slept in 2006 at the U.S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield. Court records say the other inmate survived.

Defense attorney Thomas Carver says Jones is slowly dying of end-stage renal disease. Jones already is serving a life sentence for two robberies and murders in 1979 and 1980 in Washington, D.C.

Baker, who is from Ohio, had served about half of his six-year sentence for a cocaine-related conviction when he was killed.