Judge Orlando Garcia's order staying the execution of Jeff Wood is in the Breaking News Documents in the right column. The Supreme Court established the standard determining competency to be executed in 1986, in Ford v. Wainwright. The Court revisited the issue last year in Panetti v. Quarterman.
"Federal Judge, Chastising the Texas Courts, Orders a Stay of Execution," is James McKinley's New York Times report.
With only hours until his scheduled execution, a man won a stay Thursday when a federal judge granted him a hearing to determine whether he was mentally competent.
The condemned man, Jeffery Lee Wood, 35, was to be put to death Thursday evening for a killing committed by his partner in a 1996 robbery. But the execution was put off for at least six months by the decision of the judge, Orlando Luis Garcia of the Federal District Court in San Antonio, who suggested that he would hold the hearing next February or March.
And:
Mr. Wood’s lawyers argue that he is too delusional to understand why he is to die and thinks that among other things he is the victim of a Freemason conspiracy.
Judge Garcia wrote that Mr. Wood’s bizarre statements at his trial and in prison “at least arguably suggest the petitioner lacks a rational understanding of the causal link between his role in his criminal offense and the reason he has been sentenced to death.”
The judge said the Texas courts erred badly in the last week when they refused to hire mental health experts to determine whether Mr. Wood was mad or to appoint a lawyer to represent him at a competency hearing.
The United States Supreme Court has held that it is unconstitutional to execute insane people who cannot understand why they are being put to death or that their execution is imminent.
Judge Garcia said lawyers for Mr. Wood had submitted enough evidence of a delusional state of mind to warrant a hearing on the matter, and he strongly chastised the state courts for denying Mr. Wood a lawyer and a psychologist to help make that claim.
Mr. Wood was caught in a Catch-22, the judge said. The state courts ruled that he had to show he was insane for them to appoint a lawyer and a psychologist to help him prove he was insane. That, the judge said, is “an insane system.”
Mr. Wood has a very limited intellect and a history of emotional problems, learning disabilities and, in prison, suicide attempts.
"Judge Delays Execution, Blasts ‘Insane System’ to Determine Sanity," is Debra Cassens Weiss' report in the ABA eJournal.
Garcia said the state had argued Wood had to make a “substantial showing of incompetency” before a court could appoint a lawyer and psychiatrist to make his case.
"With all due respect," the judge wrote, "a system which requires an insane person to first make a 'substantial showing' of his own lack of mental capacity without the assistance of counsel or a mental health expert, in order to obtain such assistance is, by definition, an insane system."
AP, via Google News, has, "Judge delays execution of condemned Texas inmate," by Juan Lozano.
But U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia in San Antonio granted a request by Wood's attorneys to delay his execution so they could hire a mental health expert to pursue their arguments that he is incompetent to be executed. Texas courts had previously refused similar appeals.
Wood's "motion presents non-frivolous arguments suggesting (he) currently lacks a rational understanding of the connection between his role in his offense and the punishment imposed upon him," Garcia wrote in his order.
While Garcia wrote that the evidence was far from compelling, there were enough facts to conclude Wood had made a "substantial threshold showing of insanity."
Garcia wrote that his decision was based on the state trial court's refusal to afford Wood fundamental due process protections mandated by the U.S. Supreme Court's 2007 decision, which blocked the execution of a mentally ill Texas murderer because lower courts failed to consider whether he had a rational understanding of why he was to be killed.
Wood's attorneys say he suffers from paranoia and delusions, but the state does not recognize he suffers from mental illness.
"We applaud the (court) for upholding Jeff Wood's rudimentary due process right to have his competency evaluated," said Andrea Keilen, executive director of Texas Defender Service, a legal group also representing Wood.
The Texas Attorney General's Office, which argued Wood had failed to show he was incompetent to be executed, did not immediately return telephone calls seeking comment Thursday.
AFP, also via Google News, has, "Execution of mentally ill man put on hold in Texas."
A US court on Thursday granted a stay of execution to a mentally ill Texas man who was set to die for his role in a murder-robbery, even though he did not pull the trigger.
"Today, the Federal District Court granted a stay of execution in the case of Jeff Wood to allow the court to consider compelling evidence that Jeff Wood is too mentally ill to be executed," said a statement by the defense lawyers.
The court "held that the Texas state courts have not carefully reviewed the question of Wood's competence and that a stay of execution is necessary to ensure that Wood's mental health issues are fully presented and considered by the courts."
Wood, 35, was convicted and sentenced to die for his role in the robbery and killing of a store manager, Kris Keeran, even though Wood was outside the building at the time of the killing.
According to Texas' "law of parties" statute, participants in a crime can be convicted even if they have no role in or advance knowledge that a killing is to take place.
Wood's partner in crime, Daniel Reneau, was executed in 2002 for the murder.
"At Reneau's trial, the prosecution had argued that Reneau was the person chiefly responsible for the crime and that Wood's role was secondary," the Death Penalty Information Center said.
The federal court intervened after the Texas Board of Pardons denied Wood's application for clemency on Wednesday. Prosecutors said they would not appeal.
In 1997, Wood was initially found incompetent to stand trial after a neuropsychologist said he had "a delusional system, an inability to grasp the reality surrounding the issues specific to this case, his role in it, in the crime," defense lawyers said in their statement.
However, Wood was later tried and convicted.
Allan Turner writes, "Accomplice in 1996 slaying gets execution delay," in today's Houston Chronicle.
In a blistering opinion that labeled state court proceedings "an insane system," a federal judge Thursday halted the execution of Jeffery Wood to allow mental health experts to determine whether the killer is sane enough to be put to death.
U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia's ruling came less than six hours before Wood, 35, was to be executed for his role as getaway driver in the 1996 murder-robbery of a Kerrville convenience store clerk.
Wood was en route to Huntsville's death house when the decision was handed down. His guards returned him to death row in Livingston.
Earlier coverage of the Wood case is here. StandDown's mental illness index is here.
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