Tabler worked at a bar called TeaZers and investigators said he had a conflict with his boss, Rahmouni, who allegedly said he could have Tabler's family “wiped out” for $10.
“Petitioner has spent the last twenty years in the Courts, and see's no point in wasting this Courts time, nor anyone else's,” Tabler wrote to the state Court of Criminal Appeals on Dec. 9, 2024, after his current execution date was set.
The ACLU appealed Tabler’s case to the U.S. Supreme Court last year, claiming he was denied adequate legal representation during his lower court appeals by attorneys who refused to participate in hearings at what they said was his request.
Tabler's death row phone calls in 2008 to state Sen. John Whitmire, who is now the mayor of Houston, prompted an unprecedented lockdown of more than 150,000 inmates in the the nation's second-largest prison system.
During the sentencing phase of his trial, prosecutors introduced Tabler's written and videotaped statements that he also killed Dotson and Benefield days later because he was worried they would tell people he killed the men.
