Sanders: Another execution is scheduled under flawed law-of-parties
provision
By BOB RAY SANDERS
bobray@star-telegram.com
August 17, 2008

Make a note of this name: Jeffery Lee Wood.

And this date: Thursday, Aug. 21, 2008.

That’s Wood’s scheduled date of execution, two days after his 35th
birthday.

Now, go back in time with me.

It was a year ago this month — just outside the prison walls that
house the Texas death chamber — when a small group of us staunch
death-penalty opponents stood in stunned amazement with the family of
a condemned man.

We had just gotten news that Gov. Rick Perry had taken the advice of
the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and commuted the sentence of
Kenneth Foster from death to life in prison. The decree came just a
few hours before Foster’s scheduled execution.

Our amazement turned to jubilation on the Huntsville prison grounds
that afternoon, not only because Foster’s life had been spared but
also because the governor and board had hinted that there were
problems with the law under which the inmate had been convicted and
sentenced.

Foster had been tried under the "law of parties" designed to treat
"conspirators" equally, meaning that all could be considered culpable
for the actions of the one who commits a second crime while in the
commission of another. Texas is the only state that applies that law
in capital cases.

In Foster’s case, he had been riding around with three other men in
San Antonio one night when they stopped to talk to a woman. While
Foster waited in the car, one of his passengers, Mauriceo Brown,
approached the woman’s male companion some distance away.

There was a shot and Brown rushed back to the car and told Foster to
drive away. It was then that he learned that Brown had shot the man,
later identified as 25-year-old Michael LaHood.

The evidence clearly showed that Foster, while near the scene of the
crime, did not and could not have known what his companion would do.
Yet, he stood trial with Brown on capital murder charges. Both were
convicted and sentenced to death. Brown was executed July 19, 2006.

The governor, in commuting Foster’s sentence, expressed concern that
the two defendants had been tried together and suggested that the
Legislature should address the law in its next session.

This newspaper editorialized against Foster’s execution and called
for the Legislature to re-examine the law of parties.

Wood, convicted under the same law of parties, is set to be executed
this week, five months before the next legislative session begins.

His case is more complicated than Foster’s and involves a series of
issues that demand his sentence be commuted to life.

Although he was not tried with his co-defendant, a man who’s been
executed for the 1996 murder of a Kerrville convenience store
operator, prosecutors continued to link him to the killer.

"Daniel Reneau, who coldly murdered Kriss Keeran in the early morning
hours of January 2, 1996, has already been executed by the State of
Texas for this senseless act," according to a clemency petition
submitted to the governor and the Board of Pardons and Paroles.
"Nevertheless, on August 21, 2008, the State seeks to execute Jeffery
Wood for the same crime, even though the State does not contend that
Mr. Wood shot Keeran. In fact, Mr. Wood was not even in the building
when Reneau shot and killed Keeran."

Wood was in on a scheme with Reneau to rob the store with the help of
the store’s assistant manager, Bill Bunker, according to the
petition. It was to have been an inside job, as Bunker had told the
two men where the video recording devices were and how much money was
expected to be in the safe.

When Reneau went into the store, Wood remained in a pickup and was
later shocked by the sound of a gunshot. Reneau had killed Keeran.

The clemency petition suggests that Wood’s culpability for the crime
should lie somewhere between Reneau’s and Bunker’s.

Reneau committed the murder and has been executed for it, but "Bunker
— despite being a co-conspirator without whose agreement and
encouragement the crime never would have occurred — was never charged
with any crime," the petition said.

Other issues include whether Wood was even mentally competent to
stand trial. One court said he wasn’t, but he was later declared
competent. Although the trial court refused to let him represent
himself, he, in effect, would not allow his court-appointed attorneys
to do their job.

"Bowing to Mr. Wood’s emotional and irrational insistence, Mr. Wood’s
appointed lawyers declined to cross-examine any witnesses or present
any evidence on Mr. Wood’s behalf," the petition states. "Mr. Wood’s
trial attorneys called Mr. Wood’s actions a 'gesture of suicide’ and
objected on moral grounds to participating in the arrangement ordered
by the trial court — effectively as legal vessels assisting Mr.
Wood’s suicidal ends."

Then, in the punishment phase of the trial, the state called Dr.
James Grigson (known widely as "Dr. Death") to the stand to testify
that if Wood were not given the death penalty he would continue to be
a danger to society. Grigson, who had already been discredited, got
his nickname because of the hundreds of times he testified for the
state in capital cases.

"Despite having a valid license, Grigson was a medical fraud,
although Mr. Wood’s jury did not know it," the petition contends. "In
1995, three years before he testified in Mr. Wood’s trial, Grigson
was expelled from the American Psychiatric Association and the Texas
Society of Psychiatric Physicians for flagrant ethical violations
related to his testimony purporting to predict future dangerousness.
Because he was not cross-examined, Mr. Wood’s jury was not aware of
this information. Nor did the State elicit it, despite its duty to
see that justice is done and to disclose impeachment evidence."

At least 10 state legislators have written the Board of Pardons and
Paroles, urging clemency for Wood.

I know the governor gets tired of hearing from me on death-penalty
cases, but he must commute this sentence.

It is clear that Wood does not deserve to be executed, and no other
person should be put to death under a law that many people believe
should never have applied to capital cases.

The least we can do is wait until the Legislature deals with this law
in its next session.

Bob Ray Sanders’ column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. 817-390-7775

http://www.star-telegram.com/news/columnists/bob_ray_sanders/story/837241.html