WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Friday to hear two more Texas death penalty cases to decide whether lower courts are complying with its previous rulings on faulty jury instructions.

The instructions, which guide Texas jurors as they decide between life sentences and death penalties, were rejected by the Supreme Court in 1989 and corrected by the Texas Legislature in 1991.

However, decisions in the two cases accepted Friday — and in a similar case the court accepted earlier this month — could eventually help determine whether dozens of death row inmates tried under the old rules will live or die.

At issue in the cases — Jalil Abdul-Kabir (also known as Ted Calvin Cole) v. Quarterman and Brent Brewer v. Quarterman — is whether the New Orleans-based U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals correctly analyzed whether Texas juries had the chance to spare the men from execution based on so-called mitigating factors, such as the defendants' low intelligence or childhood abuse.

The cases will be argued early next year and decided by July, as will the third Texas case, LaRoyce Smith v. Texas, which accuses another court — the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals — of deliberately disobeying Supreme Court decisions on the jury instructions. None of the cases is from the Houston area.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and the 5th Circuit have been warned previously by the Supreme Court to pay closer attention to its decisions and follow its guidance in Texas death cases.

"There are several judges who have wrestled in good faith" with the high court's previous decisions, said Rob Owen, a professor at the University of Texas law school who represents Cole and Brewer. "I think they are really crying out for further guidance from the Supreme Court."

Other judges, he said, are "just resistant to the idea of reconsidering whether they were wrong all along."

When Cole and Brewer were tried, jurors determining their sentences were asked two yes-or-no questions: Whether the murder was deliberate, and whether the killer would continue to be dangerous in the future. Two "yes" answers meant a death sentence. One or two "no" answers meant a life sentence.

In later years, after the Supreme Court found those instructions inadequate because they failed to properly consider mitigating evidence, Texas judges began crafting additional instructions.

Judges told jurors that if they thought there was any mitigating evidence that warranted sparing the killer's life, they could change one of their "yes" answers to "no."

The high court also rejected that approach, and now Texas has a third question asking jurors whether the mitigating evidence is strong enough to spare the killer's life.

Meantime, old death cases continue to be appealed, and several have made repeat trips to the Supreme Court, including those of Smith and Cole, which were before the high court two years ago.

In Smith's case, the high court didn't bother to schedule arguments, instead issuing a terse 7-2 opinion saying Smith deserved a new sentencing and criticizing the Court of Criminal Appeals for relying on a legal analysis "we never countenanced and now have unequivocally rejected."

Last March, the Texas court reconsidered and reinstated Smith's death sentence.

A spokesman for the Texas Attorney General's Office, which handles many death penalty appeals, declined to comment on the cases.

patty.reinert@chron.com