A thirty-five-year-old man on death row in Texas faces execution tonight for a murder he didn’t commit. Jeff Wood is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 6:00 p.m., unless Governor Rick Perry grants him clemency. Wood was an accomplice in a 1996 convenience store robbery. He was sitting in a truck outside when the clerk was shot and killed. The man who pulled the trigger was executed six years ago, but Wood was given a death sentence for the same crime under the Texas law of parties. We go to the prison where Jeff Wood is awaiting death to speak with his wife, mother and father outside. We also speak with Liliana Segura of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty.
No one disputes the fact that Jeff Wood did not kill anyone. But he
was convicted and sentenced to death under Texas’s law of parties
for the 1996 murder of convenience store clerk Kriss Keeran. Wood was
sitting in a truck outside the store when the murder occurred. The man
who confessed to the murder, Daniel Reneau, was executed six years ago.
But
the Texas law of parties allows accomplices to be subject to the death
penalty if a murder occurs during a crime, even if he or she did not
commit it. So one year after Renaeu was given a death sentence for
killing Keeran, Jeff Wood, was given a death sentence for the same
crime. Essentially, for failing to anticipate that a murder would occur
during the robbery.
The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles denied
Wood clemency on Tuesday, the day he turned 35 on deathrow in
Livingston, Texas. His lawyers have filed a clemency letter with
governor Rick Perry requesting a 30-day reprieve. The letter notes that
Wood may be incompetent to be executed and requires mental health
services. An initial jury had found Wood to be mentally incompetent to
stand trial.
