Accomplice in 1996 slaying gets execution delay
Opponents say 'law of parties' is archaic and unjust
By ALLAN TURNER
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
Aug. 21, 2008, 11:28PM
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Jeffery Wood waited in the getaway car while his partner killed a store clerk.



At least three Texas death row inmates have been executed under the law of parties, which makes accomplices as liable as the actual killer in capital murder cases.
• Carlos Santana, 40, executed in 1993 for the death of 29-year-old security guard Oliver Flores during a failed $1.1 million armored car heist in Houston. His co-defendant, James Meanes, the triggerman, was executed in 1998.

• Joseph Starvaggi, 34, executed in 1987 for fatally shooting Montgomery County probation officer John Denson, 43, during a Magnolia home burglary. An accomplice, G.W. Green, 49, was executed in 1991; a third man, Glenn Martin, got life in prison.

• Doyle Skillern, 49, was executed in 1985 for the murder of Department of Public Safety narcotics officer Patrick Allen Randel. Skillern claimed an accomplice, Charles Victor Sanne, was the gunman. Sanne got a life sentence.

Source: Death Penalty Information Center and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Web site
In a blistering opinion that labeled state court proceedings "an insane system," a federal judge Thursday halted the execution of Jeffery Wood to allow mental health experts to determine whether the killer is sane enough to be put to death.

U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia's ruling came less than six hours before Wood, 35, was to be executed for his role as getaway driver in the 1996 murder-robbery of a Kerrville convenience store clerk.

Wood was en route to Huntsville's death house when the decision was handed down. His guards returned him to death row in Livingston.

Prosecutors indicated they would not appeal the decision.

Wood's pending execution, the result of a rare capital conviction under Texas' law of parties, stirred national protest. The law, which has been part of the Texas penal code since at least 1879, holds all participants in the crime culpable.

Wood's accomplice, David Reneau, fired the fatal bullet. Reneau was executed in 2002.

Garcia appointed attorneys Scott Sullivan of San Antonio and Jared Tyler of Houston to represent Wood and a psychiatrist to work with them.

"We are relieved that we are going through the process whereby the court will determine if he is competent to be executed," Sullivan said. "It is a process that is dearly needed in this case."

Sullivan said he will report the results of his client's psychiatric testing to the court early next year.

If the judge, after considering the psychiatric evaluation, finds Wood competent, he again will be scheduled for execution. If not, he will receive psychiatric care in a prison setting.

Sullivan acted as Wood's court-appointed attorney in an unsuccessful appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Since the high court's rebuff, Wood, though indigent, has been without court-appointed counsel. A Kerrville state district court denied Wood's petition to obtain another court-appointed lawyer.

Sullivan said he has provided Wood free legal assistance as the execution date drew near.

In a terse parsing of legal procedures, Garcia noted that Wood, in his latest appeals, was granted neither a court-appointed lawyer nor expert assistance in establishing that he was not competent.

Instead, Garcia wrote, the state insisted Wood make a "substantial showing of incompetency" before he was entitled to a court-designated lawyer or mental health expert.

"With all due respect," the judge wrote, "a system which 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 conceded that Wood's claim of incompetence "is far from compelling," but noted that "petitioner's delusional thought processes convinced at least one jury he was incompetent to stand trial in May 1997."

The judge noted that mental health experts who interviewed Wood during the period between his two trials found the killer's "narcissistic tendencies and almost delusional belief in the inevitability of his ultimate vindication have grown more prominent."

"Moreover," the judge wrote, "the petitioner exhibited a bizarre, seemingly paranoid, clearly suicidal ideation during his capital trial." During the punishment phase, Wood banned his attorneys from calling witnesses on his behalf.

Garcia wrote that Wood's petition for a stay "at least arguably suggest(s) petitioner lacks a rational understanding of the causal link between his role in his criminal offense and the reason he has been sentenced to death."

Wood would have been the ninth killer executed in Texas this year and the 414th since executions were resumed in 1982.

allan.turner@chron.com