Texas death row inmate Charles Flores is seeking to force the state's highest criminal court to consider whether his murder conviction was tainted by witness testimony that was improperly influenced by hypnosis.

Flores was sentenced to death in 1999 for the robbery and murder of 64-year-old Betty Black.

She and her dog were shot dead in her Dallas County home that was torn apart in search of a large sum of money her son, a drug dealer, kept in the house.