Texas Pardons Board Turns Down Getaway Driver’s Death Penalty Petition
A Texas death-row inmate who was sitting in a truck when his accomplice shot and killed a gas station cashier has failed to persuade a Texas pardons board to commute his sentence.
Yesterday, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles unanimously rejected the petition filed on behalf of Jeffrey Lee Wood, the New York Times reports. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals also dismissed his motion for the appointment of experts to evaluate his mental competency to be executed.
Wood’s lawyers were planning an appeal with the federal district court and are seeking a 30-day reprieve from the governor, a spokesperson told ABAJournal.com in an e-mail. His execution is scheduled for Thursday. He would be the ninth Texas prisoner executed this year, the Houston Chronicle reports.
Wood was sentenced under a Texas law that authorizes the death penalty for accomplices to crimes that result in a murder. Wood’s lawyers claim he suffers from delusions and has limited intellect.
“Mr. Wood—for all the fault he does bear for [the murder victim’s] untimely death—does not deserve to die,” his clemency petition asserts. “He has never taken a human life by his own hands. He sits on death row today because [of] his emotional and psychological impairments—the same impairments that had been identified by school psychologists since he was a child and for which a jury had found him incompetent to stand trial.”
A second jury found Wood competent after he spent a short time in a mental hospital.
