The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Friday granted him a stay of execution on Friday when everybody, including the prosecuting attorney, agreed that Jeffrey Wood did not kill anyone, CNN reported.
Advertisement
A Texas court has halted the execution of a man who was scheduled to die for a 1996 fatal robbery where he didn’t pull the trigger.
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. He was not inside of the convenience store at the time that 31-year-old Kriss Keeran was shot by Wood’s friend, Daniel Reneau, while robbing the store.
Been says Wood never stood a chance in court.
Alcala, a Republican and an appointee of former Republican Texas Gov. Rick Perry, argued that Wood did not meet the requirements for execution based on the landmark 1982 Supreme Court case Enmund v. Florida, nor the 1987 ruling Tison v. Arizona. Wood waited in a vehicle while Reneau shot the clerk in the face, but Wood was still convicted of capital murder under what’s known as the Texas law of parties, which makes a participant in a capital murder case equally culpable.
Reneau was executed in 2002.
Three jurors from Wood’s trial have said they would have discounted Grigson’s testimony if they’d known of the expulsion, according to the appeal.
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. Wood, who was outside the building when it happened and who had no criminal history. By a vote of 7-2, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals delayed the execution by lethal injection of the 43-year-old man.
This item has been corrected to reflect that the lawmakers hadn’t yet sent their letter to the parole board.
The Death Penalty Information Center monitoring group says that 10 murder accomplices have been executed in the U.S. since 1976, five of them in Texas. But he says Wood doesn’t deserve to die.
“I am not aware of a case where a person has been executed with so minimal culpability and with such little participation in the event”, Tyler said in an interview.
Leach, however, said that’s not what troubles him.
Jeffery Wood, scheduled to be executed on Wednesday.
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. The tests resulted in Wood being declared competent. “Wood was not involved in a conspiracy to murder”. A jury can only sentence someone to death if it unanimously agrees that person would present a danger.
