WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday reinstated the death sentence of a Kentucky man convicted in the 1997 murders of a Louisville couple including a pregnant woman who was strangled and whose body was found with scissors sticking out from her neck.

The justices, in an unsigned opinion, reversed a February ruling by the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that had thrown out convicted murderer Roger Wheeler’s death sentence.

The appeals court had said Wheeler deserved a new sentencing proceeding because the state trial court judge had wrongly excluded a juror who had expressed some reservations about imposing capital punishment.

The judge’s move violated Wheeler’s right for his case to be heard by an impartial jury under the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the appeals court ruled.

The Supreme Court disagreed. The justices said the appeals court should have deferred to Kentucky’s high court, which found there was no violation. A federal law bars federal courts from second-guessing state appeals court decisions in death penalty cases unless there is a violation of “clearly established” federal law under Supreme Court precedent.

Wheeler was convicted of the 1997 murders in Louisville of Nigel Malone and Nairobi Warfield in the apartment they shared.

The Supreme Court’s opinion noted that Malone was stabbed nine times and that Warfield, who was pregnant, was strangled to death, and a pair of scissors stuck out from her neck. DNA linked Wheeler to the crime.

The case is White v. Wheeler, U.S. Supreme Court, No. 14-1372.