Wood was convicted under a Texas law that makes a participant in a capital murder crime equally culpable, even though it was Wood’s friend who shot a store clerk.
Advertisement
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has halted the execution of Jeff Wood – a man who never killed anyone – six days before he was set to die by lethal injection.
Jeffery Wood, who had been scheduled to be executed next Wednesday, was sitting in a pickup truck outside a gas station in January 1996 while his friend robbed the convenience store and shot the clerk inside.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals acted Friday in the case of Jeffery Wood.
The case has drawn highly unusual opposition from Republican lawmakers.
Wood’s roommate at the time, Daniel Reneau, was convicted of pulling the trigger and executed on June 13, 2002.
Wood’s case has captured attention across the US over his culpability in the shooting of a convenience store clerk, his mental competence and criticism surrounding his original trial.
According to CNN, the order claimed “false and misleading testimony” presented by the prosecution’s psychiatrist, as well as the resulting judgment violated due process because it was based on a “false psychiatric testimony concerning [Wood’s] future dangerousness”.
“Justice is not served by executing Mr”. Three former jurors have said they feel the government’s presentation to them of a discredited psychiatrist who predicted with certainty, and without evaluating Mr.
During his sentencing trial, prosecutors brought in Dr. James Grigson, nicknamed “Dr. Death” because of how often he testified for the state in capital murder trials, to examine if Wood would be a future danger to society if he was given life without parole instead of death. Wood’s execution was scheduled for Wednesday.
Ten people have been executed as accessories to felony murder since the United States reinstated the death penalty in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, which monitors capital punishment. But he says Wood doesn’t deserve to die.
Leach, however, said that’s not what troubles him.
Advertisement
Questions regarding the mental competence of the condemned man, as well as the trial in which he was sentenced to be executed, have swirled around the case on a national level. A federal judge halted the original execution date in 2008 so that Wood – who was once found to have been mentally incompetent to stand trial – could be tested to determine whether he understood why he would be put to death.
