The U.S. Supreme Court today (Dec. 13) refused to review the appeal of a Texas death row inmate who chanted the chorus to METALLICA's "No Remorse" after fatally shooting a man in the head in Corpus Christi and robbing him of $13 twenty years ago.

The Supreme Court had previously voted twice to stay Troy Kunkle's execution while his attorneys filed appeals. The most recent vote came last month by a 5-to-4 vote.

His attorneys contend that Kunkle's drug and alcohol abuse history wasn't properly considered as mitigating evidence at trial. But justices declined today to accept the appeal, allowing Kunkle's execution to proceed.

Troy Kunkle (photo), who has the METALLICA logo tattooed on his left arm, was first scheduled to be executed in July, but the Supreme Court issued a stay as the justices considered a writ filed by Kunkle's lawyers. The writ asked the justices to decide if Texas courts have been applying an unconstitutional standard that did not allow juries to consider mitigating circumstances, such as mental illness, during capital murder trials.

According to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Kunkle, who was 18 at the time, and his friends, Lora Lee Zaiontz, Russell Stanley and Aaron Adkins, were visiting Corpus Christi from San Antonio in 1984. They saw Steven Horton, 31, walking along Paul Jones Avenue and offered him a ride. They demanded his wallet, which contained $13.

Kunkle, according to the state's report, then told Stanley to kill Horton. When Stanley refused, Kunkle took the .22-caliber pistol and shot Horton. At the time of the killing, Kunkle reportedly quoted lyrics from METALLICA's song "No Remorse", from the album "Kill 'em All", when he said, "Another day, another death, another sorrow, another breath."

All four reportedly had taken LSD and were drinking. They were eventually convicted of murder. Besides Kunkle, only Zaiontz remains incarcerated, prison officials said. The others were released.

On legal notepads in court, Kunkle wrote METALLICA lyrics, alleging the lyrics from "No Remorse" inspired him to kill. This disturbed the band's lead singer, James Hetfield, when he learned how Kunkle reacted to the verse, according to KZTV10.

Hetfield, in 1984, said, "I guess this kid took it into his own ways. Of course, we're upset but I mean we had nothing directly to do with it."

Leslie Poynter Dixon, a former assistant district attorney in Nueces County who prosecuted the case, last week recalled a hearing about whether the METALLICA song could be used as evidence.

"As this album [METALLICA's 'Kill 'Em All'] was being played for the judge so he could make his decision on whether it would be admitted, Mr. Kunkle was playing an air guitar," said Dixon, now the district attorney in Van Zandt County in East Texas. "That really struck me. It suggested to me that Mr. Kunkle had no regard for human life — even his own — because this was his trial and the state was seeking the death penalty."