13 December 201721 December 2022 4WardEverUK

District attorney who prosecuted Jeff Wood now wants him off death row

source: Texas Tribune
published: 7 December 2017

The Texas prosecutor who sought the death penalty almost 20 years ago against a man who never killed anyone has now asked that his sentence be reduced to life in prison.

Lucy Wilke, now the Kerr County district attorney, was the prosecutor in the 1998 murder trial of Jeff Wood — a man whose scheduled execution last year prompted lawmakers to question when the state should put accomplices to death.

Although she originally decided to seek the death penalty for Wood, she later said in a letter to the prison parole board that “the penalty now appears to be excessive.”

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3 January 201721 December 2022 4WardEverUK

The continuing collapse of the death penalty (Florida Supreme Court)

source: NY Times
published: 26 December 2016

Piece by piece, the death penalty continues to fall apart. Last week, the Florida Supreme Court invalidated between 150 and 200 death sentences — nearly half of all those in the state — because they were imposed under a law the United States Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional in January.

The law, which required judges and not juries to make the factual findings necessary to sentence someone to die, violated the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of a jury trial. “A jury’s mere recommendation is not enough,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for an 8-to-1 majority.

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22 August 201621 December 2022 4WardEverUK

Execution halted for Jeff Wood, who never killed anyone

source: Texas Tribune
published: 19 August 2016

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has halted the execution of Jeff Wood — a man who never killed anyone — six days before he was set to die by lethal injection. The order was issued on his 43rd birthday.

The court issued a brief, two-page order Friday afternoon sending the case back to the original trial court so it can examine Wood’s claim that a jury was improperly persuaded to sentence him to death by testimony from a highly criticized psychiatrist nicknamed “Dr. Death.” The order creates the possibility that Wood’s death sentence could be thrown out, though not his conviction.