Today's San Antonio Express-News reports, "Death row convict's lawyers argue he's incompetent," by Guillermo Contreras.
A man convicted of participating in a fatal robbery in Kerrville is arguing he is mentally incompetent to be put to death.
At a hearing that began Tuesday, lawyers for Jeffrey Lee Wood, 36, tried to convince U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia that Wood is too delusional to understand why he is to die.
Wood believes, among other things, that he is the victim of a Freemason conspiracy and that bribing the trial judge would have fixed his problems, court records show.
In 1998, Wood was convicted and sentenced to die for the murder of store clerk Kris Keeran under Texas' “law of parties,” which makes all who are involved in a felony, like robbery, subject to the death penalty if one of them commits murder in the course of it.
And:
On the eve of Wood's execution in August 2008, Garcia issued him a stay, finding Wood had made bizarre statements at his trial and in prison that “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.”
Garcia said at the time that the Texas courts erred when they refused to hire mental health experts to determine whether Wood was insane or to appoint a lawyer to represent him at a competency hearing.
The U.S. Supreme Court has held it is unconstitutional to execute insane people who can't understand why they are being put to death or that their execution is imminent.
Wood's mental problems gave one jury reason to find him incompetent to stand trial. After spending time in a mental hospital, he was found competent by a second jury.
Evidence of his mental troubles never was brought before the jury that imposed the death penalty because Wood, who once tried to represent himself, became angry and told his lawyers to do nothing during the penalty phase. They complied.
The article notes that the hearing is continuing today. Earlier coverage of the Wood case is here.
The question of competency to be executed was addressed in a 1989 Supreme Court case which set the standard for evaluating competency to be executed, Ford v. Wainwright. The Supreme Court revisited the subject in 2007 in the Texas case of Scott Panetti; more on Panetti v. Quarterman, via Oyez.
Several notable posts on the question of competency to be excuted:
Related posts are in the mental illness index, including recent coverage of the case of Steven Staley, another severely mentally ill Texas death row inmate.
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