The Dallas Morning News Crime Blog is reporting that Greg Wright is going to receive a stay of execution. We haven’t confirmed this yet.
From the DMN blog:
Convicted murderer Gregory Edward Wright and his wife Connie Wright, who he married while on death row, have reason to celebrate today. Supporters who champion his cause on a website, www.freegregwright.com, might also want to break out the champaign.
Mr. Wright was scheduled to die Tuesday. The formerly homeless crack-smoker was convicted in 1997 of robbing and fatally stabbing a religious do-gooder who took him into her home and offered him food and a place to sleep.
But his execution is to be postponed, according to an agreement that his attorney, Bruce Anton, said was reached this morning in state district court.
“We’ve agreed to a stay of execution for additional DNA testing,” Mr. Anton said. “The judge is going to modify the execution date and reset it for a later time.”
Mr. Anton said DNA tests have called into question some of the evidence that linked his client to the murder during trial. He also said his client’s co-defendant, John Wade Adams, another former homeless man, has come forward from death row to claim sole responsibility for the killing.
Mr. Wright “was in the home at the time of the murder,” Mr. Anton said. But “he had nothing to do with the murder…”
“The state now is arguing that, well, if he was in the home he must have had something to do with the murder,” Mr. Anton said. “That’s not anything that they alleged at trial. That’s something that they’re saying now, I suppose in an effort to salvage the conviction in some fashion.”
Wright, then 32, was convicted of capital murder in the March 21, 1997, death of John Wade Adams, a 52-year-old DeSoto widow who had taken him in. Prosecutors said he stabbed her repeatedly in the neck and chest.
Afterward, according to trial testimony, he and Mr. Adams stole her Chrysler New Yorker and traded her television, VCR, microwave, color printer, weed trimmer, hand-carried radio and rifle for some crack.