From the Houston Chronicle:

HUNTSVILLE — A federal judge today granted a request to delay the execution of condemned inmate Jeffery Wood, who was set for execution this evening for taking part in the robbery and murder of a convenience store clerk in the Texas Hill Country.

The judge 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.

In Austin, we will still gather at the Texas Capitol on the sidewalk facing Congress at 11th Street today at 5:30 PM.

Federal judge Orlando Garcia stayed the execution, finding that Texas violated Wood’s constitutional rights by refusing to provide Wood with a lawyer to help him argue that he is too mentally incompetent to be executed.

“With all due respect, a system that 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,” Garcia wrote.

Thursday, August 21, Texas is set to execute Jeff Wood even though he did not kill anyone. The person who actually killed the victim has already been executed by Texas. Yesterday, the Board of Pardons and Paroles voted against clemency for Wood, but Governor Perry can still stop this execution by issuing a 30 day stay of execution.

Please call Governor Perry at 512-463-2000 and urge him to issue a 30 day stay of execution for Wood. You can also send Perry an email through his website.

The Washington Post reports:

The state of Texas is scheduled to execute Jeffery Lee Wood by lethal injection tonight, even though he did not actually kill anyone. Wood was sitting in a truck outside a convenience store when an accomplice shot and killed a cashier in a botched robbery 12 years ago.

If the execution moves forward, Wood, 35, will become only the eighth person to be put to death as an accomplice since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976, according to the Washington-based Death Penalty Information Center. More than 1,100 people have been executed during this period. The executed accomplices do not include those who were put to death for hiring someone to commit murder.

“It is very, very rare,” said David Fathi, U.S. program director for Human Rights Watch. “This is a case that illustrates everything that is wrong with the death penalty in Texas.”

In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court banned executions of juvenile offenders on the basis that a national consensus had formed against executing such people. At the time, 22 juvenile offenders had been executed, so it was very rare for such executions to be carried out.

There have only been 7 executions of people who did not kill anyone but whose accomplices did, so it would appear that a national consensus also exists against executing people who did not kill anyone but who were sentenced to death because an accomplice killed someone in the course of another crime. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1989 that executing juvenile offenders was constitutional and in that same year the Court ruled that executing people with mental retardation was constitutional. But in 2002 and 2005, the Court overturned its 1980’s rulings and banned executions of both juveniles and people with mental retardation. The Court should now intervene in the Wood execution on the same basis, that executing people like Wood, who did not actually kill anyone, is a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s 8th Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment and that since the last Court ruling in 1987 a national consensus against such executions has developed, shown by the fact that only 7 such executions have taken place.

There have been two cases, both in the 1980s, when the Court ruled on this issue.

From the Washington Post:

A 1982 decision by the Supreme Court appears to support such a view. The court decided 5 to 4 in Enmund v. Florida that imposing the death penalty on a defendant when a murder was committed by others was a violation of the Eighth Amendment if the defendant “does not himself kill, attempt to kill, or intend that a killing take place, or lethal force will be employed.”

But a second 5 to 4 decision by the court appears to support Texas. In Tison v. Arizona, a case in which family members broke their father out of prison and then killed a family of four that they flagged down to help repair their getaway car, the court said that the death penalty could apply if it could be shown that the defendant was a “major participant” in the felony and acted with “reckless indifference to human life.”

“That’s why I think this issue may come back to the Supreme Court,” Dieter said. “This is an area that needs some clarification.”

Governor Perry can issue a 30 day stay and then he could request another review by the Board of Pardons and Paroles. He could request the board to commute the sentence to life in prison or to issue a long enough stay for the next session of the Legislature to review the law of parties so that a person could not be sentenced to death unless they actually killed someone. If they only played a role in one offense, but did not intend to kill anyone, then they should not be subject to the death penalty. In such cases, they could be sentenced to a term in prison up to life in prison.

More on the Jeff Wood case can be found at www.savejeffwood.com, including information that Wood has had mental illness issues since childhood. At his trial, he even refused to allow his lawyers to bring witnesses on his behalf during the penalty phase.

An excellent presentation of why Jeff Wood’s sentence should be commuted to life can be read in the 22 page application for commutation written by his lawyers. They write, “Mr. Wood undeniably shares responsibility for what happened to Mr. Keeran, and should be held accountable for his reckless acts, but no man ever deserves to die for another man’s acts.”.

A letter from ten Texas legislators urging clemency is here.

Another letter from State Rep Mike Villareal is here. In addition, State Rep Dora Olivo has also written a letter.

The victim’s father, Charles Keeran, also would like to see Wood live. “The death penalty, to me, is the easy way out,” he said. “If you had to be down there and get up every morning, as hot and humid as it is, knowing that you are going to spend the rest of your life locked up under those conditions, that’s punishment. That’s what I think my son would want for him.”

Charles Keeran also called the governor’s office on the day that Daniel Reneau was executed, urging the governor to commute Reneau’s sentence to life, even though Reneau is the person who actually killed Mr. Keeran’s son.

If the death penalty is used, it should be reserved for the worst of the worst killers. Jeff Wood is not even a killer, much less one of the worst of the worst of all killers.

Last week, ten legislators wrote a letter to the Board of Pardons and Paroles and Governor Perry urging clemency for Jeff Wood. Here is another letter from a state legislator: State Representative Mike Villareal. We also know that Rep Dora Olivo wrote her own letter.

August 12, 2008

The Honorable Rick Perry

Governor of Texas

State Capitol

Room 2S.1

Austin, Texas 78701

Ms. Rissie Owens

Chair

Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles

Members of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles

Executive Clemency Section

8610 Shoal Creek Boulevard

Austin, Texas 78757

Dear Governor Perry, Chairwoman Owens and Board Members:

As you know, the execution of Jeffrey Wood is currently set for August 21, 2008. I am writing to respectfully request a review of the facts of the case which I believe urge commutation of Jeffrey Wood’s sentence to no more than life without parole.

Mr. Wood was convicted of capital murder under the Texas Law of Parties. It appears that he neither killed, nor anticipated that Daniel Earl Reneau would kill, Kris Keeran. It also appears that Mr. Wood did not actively participate in the convenience store robbery in Kerrville that preceded the January 2, 1996 murder. He did not anticipate that a murder would occur and was not in the store when the murder took place. The shooter, Danny Reneau, has already been executed for this crime.

Our justice system should be required to meet a high standard to use the Law of Parties provision to extend capital punishment to someone who did not directly commit murder. It appears that in the case of Jeffrey Wood application of the Law of Parties falls short.

Thank you very much for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Michael U. Villarreal

The New York Times is reporting that Governor Perry “hasn’t made a decision” on whether to grant a 30 day stay of execution for Jeff Wood. So, please call his office and urge him to issue a stay.

From the Times:

Texas Panel Rejects Plea to Halt Execution of Accomplice in 1996 Murder

By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
Published: August 19, 2008

HOUSTON — Jeffrey Lee Wood is sentenced to die this week for the murder of a store clerk during a robbery, even though he was sitting in a truck outside the convenience store when it happened.

Mr. Wood is the latest person to face the death penalty under a Texas law that makes accomplices subject to the death penalty if a murder occurs during a crime.

His lawyers say Mr. Wood is a gullible man of limited intellect who suffers from delusions. In their view, Mr. Wood was never mentally competent to stand trial in the first place.

Nor, they argue, was Mr. Wood aware that his partner in the robbery, David Reneau, was carrying a gun, according to testimony presented at Mr. Reneau’s trial but never brought up during Mr. Wood’s trial.

These arguments failed to sway the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, however. On Tuesday afternoon, the seven-member board unanimously rejected a petition from Mr. Wood’s lawyers for a commutation of his sentence.

That means he will be executed Thursday evening, unless Gov. Rick Perry grants a 30-day reprieve or a judge issues a stay. “The governor hasn’t made a decision,” Mr. Perry’s spokeswoman, Allison Castle, said.

Mr. Wood, who is 35, also lost a motion before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Tuesday. His lawyers had asked the court to appoint a lawyer to pursue the argument that Mr. Wood lacks the mental competence to be executed.

Mr. Wood and Mr. Reneau were tried separately for the killing of Kriss Keeran, a 31-year-old cashier who was shot in the forehead during the robbery of a gas station and convenience store in Kerrville, Tex., on Jan. 2, 1996.

Mr. Reneau was executed in 2002.

The two robbers were roommates and knew the victim. Evidence at the two trials showed the pair had planned the robbery for about two weeks and had talks with Mr. Keeran and an assistant manager at the store, William Bunker, about staging a fake robbery.

But that plan went awry, and Mr. Reneau ended up walking into the store and shooting Mr. Keeran between the eyes with a .22-caliber pistol while Mr. Wood waited outside.

Then he and Mr. Wood carried the store safe and the store’s security camera out and retreated to a house belonging to Mr. Wood’s parents, where they tried to break open the safe. At the house, Mr. Wood bragged to a relative about the robbery.

A jury found Mr. Wood incompetent to stand trial after listening to testimony from a psychiatrist who said Mr. Wood was delusional and could not grasp reality. But after Mr. Wood spent a short stint in a mental hospital, a second jury found him competent. The judge did not let Mr. Wood’s lawyers cross-examine some witnesses at that hearing.

After his conviction, Mr. Wood wanted to represent himself in deliberations on his sentence, but the judge refused. Mr. Wood ordered his lawyers not to cross-examine any witnesses in the proceeding, a decision his lawyers at the time called “a gesture of suicide.” The jury voted for the death penalty.

Lucy Wilke, the Kerr County assistant district attorney who prosecuted Mr. Wood, did not return calls from a reporter. After Mr. Wood’s trial in 1988, she said that he was “not a dummy” and that the slaying was “cold-blooded, premeditated.”

Under the Texas “law of parties,” the question of whether Mr. Wood anticipated the murder is important. People who conspire to commit a felony are all responsible for an ensuing crime, like murder, if it can be shown they should have known it would happen.

The United States Supreme Court has upheld the principle, ruling in 1987 that the Constitution does not forbid the death penalty for a defendant “whose participation in a felony that results in murder is major and whose mental state is one of reckless indifference.”

At least seven people have been executed in the United States since 1985 for being accomplices in crimes during which one of their partners committed murder, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Three of those were executed in Texas.

David R. Dow, a law professor in Houston who oversees the Texas Defenders Project, which is trying to forestall the execution, said he doubted Mr. Wood was mentally competent to stand trial, much less that he knew in advance the murder would happen. In addition, Mr. Dow said, he did not receive proper legal representation during the sentencing phase.

“This case has in it virtually every feature that makes the death penalty system in Texas so scandalous,” he said.

John Council, senior reporter for Tex Parte Blog, says that Jeff Wood should not die and that prosecutors should not have sought the death penalty against him. He goes on to urge Perry to ignore the advice of the Board of Pardons and Paroles and grant him clemency anyhow. Perry has the power to grant a 30-day stay of execution without a recommendation from the BPP, so Perry could still take Council’s advice and do that much, then Wood’s lawyers could submit a new application to the Board of Pardons and Paroles, which Perry could urge them to accept.

After four years of seeing countless murdered people as a crime reporter and another 14 writing about criminal courts, not many people would describe me as a bleeding heart — not even my mom. But I’ll go on record right here, Tex Parte readers, and make the case that Jeffrey Wood should not be put to death on Thursday. That’s because Wood didn’t kill anybody. According to the Houston Chronicle, he was the wheelman during a 1996 convenience store in Kerrville; another guy killed the clerk in the hold-up and has already been put to death. But under our famous law of parties, Wood is considered just as culpable under the Texas Penal Code as the shooter, so he got tried for the death penalty, and a jury gave it to him. More often than not, accomplices get threatened by police and prosecutors by the law of parties so they’ll agree to testify against the killer. But Wood had issues; he spent some time in a state mental hospital after a jury found him incompetent to stand trial. When he was later found competent to stand trial by a second jury, he tried to fire his lawyers in the middle of the trial, according to the Chronicle. Even though the Texas Board of Pardons and Parole voted 7-0 to not recommend that Gov. Rick Perry commute his sentence to life, Perry should do it anyway. He has my permission. Prosecutors shouldn’t have gone for death against Wood in the first place.