Waterbury (AP) - A Superior Court judge has rejected the latest appeal from a death row inmate who was convicted of killing a police officer in 1992.

Richard Reynolds was convicted of shooting Officer Walter Williams in the head after he and another man were stopped by Williams on a Waterbury street just before 4 a.m. on Dec. 18, 1992.

Williams, who was 34, was on routine patrol when he stopped Reynolds for questioning. After bumping into Williams and determining he was wearing a bulletproof vest, Reynolds shot him in the left side of the head at point-blank range, prosecutors said. The shooting happened 11 days before Williams' third son was born.

Judge Carl Schuman issued a 90-page ruling last week denying Reynolds' petition for a new trial, known as a habeas corpus petition. Williams' attorneys had filed the appeal in 2004, but a hearing was not held until this year.

In his decision, Schuman acknowledged that the court, prosecutors and Reynolds' defense attorneys had failed to move the case along in a timely fashion.

Among other things, Reynolds had claimed that he was given ineffective counsel at trial and that his lawyers should have questioned State's Attorney John Connelly's method of applying the death penalty to serious cases.

Schuman wrote that the decisions of Reynolds' public defenders amounted to trial strategy. His attorneys didn't challenge Connelly's closing argument because they didn't want to highlight his comments and there was no proof that jurors' racial attitudes were inflamed during the death penalty phase, he wrote.

Connelly told the Republican-American newspaper that he was pleased for the Williams family.

"It has been a long road, but justice in this case will ultimately be served," he said.

The decision does not mean that Reynolds' execution is imminent. He can appeal the ruling to the state Supreme Court and also may file a federal petition.

Connecticut has 10 inmates on death row. The state has carried out only one execution in 51 years, when serial killer Michael Ross was put to death by lethal injection in 2005 after ending his appeals and pushing for the sentence to be carried out.

--

Information from: Republican-American, http://www.rep-am.com