The September issue of Texas Monthly has a riveting correspondence, "My Life on Death Row," letters from Charles Dean Hood to TM writer Michael Hall. Here is some material from the introduction to the letters:
In 1990, Charles Dean Hood was convicted of murder and sentenced to die. Twelve years later he began writing to senior editor Michael Hall. Here, in three of his letters, he describes in extraordinary detail his two decades spent awaiting execution and reveals what it’s like to be taken to Huntsville for the lethal injection only to receive a stay at the last possible minute—not once, but twice.
On September 10, Charles Dean Hood will be executed. Or not. Hood, who was sentenced to death in 1990, has cheated the executioner five times now, in 1994, in 1999, in 2005, and twice on his most recent date, June 17, which turned out to be one of the most dramatic execution days in Texas history.
He received his first stay that day in the late afternoon from a trial judge, but the van taking him back to death row was detained after prosecutors submitted an appeal. Over the next six hours those prosecutors battled with frantic defense attorneys, while state and federal judges tried to sort out the mess. In the end, as the clock approached midnight, the state gave up trying to put Hood to death for fear it would not be able to carry out the process in time (his death warrant was to expire at 12:00 a.m.). On September 10, the executioner will get another chance.
And:
Hood started writing to me in 2002 after I published a story on another death row inmate named Ernest Willis, who was wrongly convicted of murder in 1987 and eventually walked free as an innocent man. Willis had become such an important figure in Hood’s life that the younger inmate had started calling him Pop.
Like most prisoners who write letters, Hood claimed to be innocent, though from all I read and saw, his case seemed pretty clear-cut, one that the state had gotten right. At least I thought so until 2005, when the online magazine Salon published a story about Hood’s trial that quoted named and unnamed sources alleging that the judge, Verla Sue Holland, and the prosecutor, Tom O’Connell, had been having an affair. If this were true, it would, of course, be prima facie evidence of an unfair trial. What’s more, from 1997 to 2001, Holland had served on the Court of Criminal Appeals, the court before which Hood’s appeals had been argued. I visited Hood, read the trial transcript looking for evidence of favoritism toward O’Connell, and tried to find someone who could back up Salon’s allegations. I couldn’t and finally let the matter go.
Just for the record, Michael Hall and I are not related. Over the years, he has done some of the best reporting on criminal justice issues in Texas. Earlier coverage of Charles Dean Hood's case, and what I have dubbed the Plano HoodWink, is here.
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