Wood’s upcoming execution has gained national attention and highlighted Texas’ felony murder statute, commonly known as the law of parties, which holds that anyone involved in a crime resulting in death is equally responsible, even if they weren’t directly involved in the actual killing.
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A Texas court offered an unexpected stay yesterday of the execution of a man convicted of a murder for which he was not even present.
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.
Christian campaigners have welcomed the halting of the execution of Jeffery Wood, who was convicted as an accomplice to a murder he did not commit in 1996.
The case has drawn highly unusual opposition from Republican lawmakers.
Reneau ended up killing Keeran while Wood sat in a borrowed pickup truck outside, waiting for his friend to steal the safe. Wood’s case has captured attention across the USA over his culpability in the shooting of a convenience store clerk, his mental competence and criticism surroundin.
His lawyers argued that Wood’s due process had been violated by false testimony and scientific evidence. Reneau was executed in 2002.
“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.
Three juror’s from Wood’s original trial said they would have discounted Grigson’s trial had they known he was expelled form the association.
In 2008, Wood’s execution was postponed for the first time, when his defense team cited his learning disability and an IQ of 80, which is lower than the average 100.
Wood’s layer questioned a witness for the prosecution, forensic psychiatrist Dr. James Grigson, who told a court in the 1990s Wood would commit future acts of violence and was a threat to society. “The jurors no longer support a death sentence”.
One Republican legislator already had formally asked the Texas Board of Pardon and Paroles to recommend commuting Wood’s death sentence to life imprisonment, and GOP state Rep. Jeff Leach had said before the ruling that he was collecting a bipartisan set of signatures for a similar letter to be sent this weekend.
Ten murder accomplices, including five in Texas, have been executed in the United States since 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center watchdog.
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Leach, however, said that’s not what troubles him. He instead pointed to concerns about Wood’s mental competency and the handling of his trial.
