The Austin Chronicle's Jordan Smith reports, "Defense Lawyers Try to Halt Execution," in the current issue.
Since Texas reinstated the death penalty in 1976, only six people have been executed for a murder in which they did not directly participate, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. If Texas proceeds with the scheduled Aug. 21 execution of Jeff Wood, that number will climb to seven. Lawyers for the death row inmate, trying to spare their client that fate, are asking the Board of Pardons and Paroles to recommend commuting Wood's sentence to life in prison.
Wood was sentenced to die for the 1996 murder of his friend Kris Keeran, during a botched robbery of a Kerrville Texaco station. Wood did not fire the gun that killed Keeran and wasn't inside the gas station when another friend, Danny Reneau, fired the fatal shot into Keeran's head. (Reneau was executed in 2002.) Nonetheless, according to the state, Wood is responsible for Keeran's death and should be executed. Wood was convicted under the state's law of parties, a conspirator liability statute that posits that if two or more people plan to commit one crime but another crime occurs, each person is equally responsible for that crime, if it was foreseeable. The state argues that Wood hatched with Reneau the plan to rob the Texaco, where their friend Keeran worked, on Jan. 2, when a large amount of cash would still be on hand because of holiday bank closures. That Wood was neither in the store when the killing began nor fired the fatal shot did not mean he was not equally liable for Keeran's murder, the prosecution argued.
And:
At Reneau's trial, the state argued that he was responsible for Keeran's murder and portrayed Wood as little more than a sap, steamrolled by the villainous Reneau. But at Wood's trial, prosecutors reversed their strategy, arguing that Wood deserved to die because he'd gotten Reneau to "do his dirty work." But the idea of Wood as "mastermind" baffles attorney Sullivan, who has represented Wood since 1998. "I've watched Jeff for ... nine years," he says. "This guy, his mental capacities are not sufficient to make him a mastermind." Wood was diagnosed with learning disabilities as a child, and school officials consistently categorized him as emotionally stunted. He always sought approval for his actions and, adds his family, was easily influenced by others. He was initially found incompetent to stand trial because he was incapable of helping his defenders. At the punishment phase of his trial, Wood tried to fire his attorneys, a request denied by the judge. Nonetheless, his trial attorneys followed Wood's orders: Not only did they withhold from the jury evidence of his troubled youth, but they also failed to cross-examine any state witnesses, including the wildly speculative testimony of Dr. James Grigson – derisively known by many, including colleagues in the psychiatric community, as "Dr. Death" for predictably offering testimony in capital cases that a defendant would pose a danger to society, one of the questions a jury must decide in order to impose a death sentence.
Earlier StandDown coverage of the Wood case is here; Jeff Wood's clemency petition, here.
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