Texas set to execute get-away driver who killed nobody

(CNN) Jeffrey Wood didn't kill anyone. Everybody, including the prosecuting attorney, agrees.

But unless a last-minute commutation is granted by Texas' governor, Wood will be executed by lethal injection on Wednesday night for his role in a deadly robbery 20 years ago.

In 1996, a 22-year-old Wood waited in a pickup truck while his friend Daniel Reneau went inside a gas station in Kerrville, Texas, to steal the store's safe. Reneau ended up killing the clerk during the robbery.

Most states allow a distinction between accomplices and those who physically carry out the crime.

But in Texas, sitting in that truck and taking part in the robbery is enough to get Wood convicted of murder and onto death row.

Wood's attorney, Jared Tyler, has argued there should be a distinction. "It's rare, both in and outside of Texas, for a person to be sentenced to death based on a conviction under this kind of law," he said.

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The law of parties
The Texas statute commonly referred to as the "law of parties" abolishes "distinctions between accomplices and principals...and each party to an offense may be charged and convicted without alleging that he acted as a principal or accomplice."

Crucially, it adds: "If, in the attempt to carry out a conspiracy to commit one felony, another felony is committed by one of the conspirators, all conspirators are guilty of the felony actually committed, though having no intent to commit it..."

The law is not unique to Texas. In some states, it is called "accomplice liability" or "Pinkerton liability" resulting from the 1946 US Supreme Court case Pinkerton vs. United States, according to the National Coalition Against the Death Penalty.

The statute closest to Texas' law of parties is on the books in Georgia, NCADP says. In September 2015, Georgia executed Kelly Gissendaner, who was convicted of murder, for persuading her lover to kill her husband in 1997.

Lord Foul wrote:My objection ISNT that he was merely an accomplice, but that apparantly he is of low intelligence...

Original Quill wrote:It's a felony murder.  Almost every state has that law: if someone is killed during the commission of a felony, all participants are guilty of murder.  People are convicted of it every day.  If it happens in a state like Texas that has the death penalty, that's bad luck.

Usually Texas puts blacks to death.  This guy is white.  I wonder why he didn't get life.

Ben Reilly wrote:

Original Quill wrote:It's a felony murder.  Almost every state has that law: if someone is killed during the commission of a felony, all participants are guilty of murder.  People are convicted of it every day.  If it happens in a state like Texas that has the death penalty, that's bad luck.

Usually Texas puts blacks to death.  This guy is white.  I wonder why he didn't get life.

Okay, but it's a horrible law to begin with.

Wiki wrote:The rule has been abolished in England and Wales and in Northern Ireland.  In Canada, it has been held to be unconstitutional, as breaching the principles of fundamental justice, an interpretation unique to Canada.  In some jurisdictions (such as Victoria, Australia), the common law felony murder (called constructive murder) rule has been abolished, but has been replaced by a similar statutory provision in the Crimes Act 1958.  Similarly, in NSW (New South Wales), common law has been overridden and the question needs only be dealt with through statutory construction and application

Ben Reilly wrote:It can be taken to ridiculous extremes -- a group of teenagers is driving around, having a good time, and one decides to score some pot. The deal is interrupted by a gang member and the shopper ends up killing someone in the fight.

Does that mean the other kids in the car can be held liable for the death? After all, they are accomplices to the kid trying to buy marijuana.

Ben Reilly wrote:It can be taken to ridiculous extremes -- a group of teenagers is driving around, having a good time, and one decides to score some pot. The deal is interrupted by a gang member and the shopper ends up killing someone in the fight.

Does that mean the other kids in the car can be held liable for the death? After all, they are accomplices to the kid trying to buy marijuana.

Ethan Couch is brought into court for a hearing at Tim Curry Justice Center in Fort Worth, Texas, on April 13, 2016. Max Faulkner / Star-Telegram via AP, pool

Ethan Couch was 16 on June 15, 2013, when he got drunk at a party and drove into a group of people on a roadside in Burleson, Texas, killing four and injuring two others out of a possible 9 by standers.
Even though he admitted to the crime and had a blood-alcohol level three times the legal limit, the teenager managed to avoid jail — and was sentenced instead to 10 years probation — after his lawyers convinced a judge he was a victim of his privileged upbringing and unable to tell right from wrong.
Under the terms of his probation, Ethan Couch was not supposed to drink. But after video surfaced which showed him at a party where it appeared alcohol was served, he fled south across the border with his mother, Tonya, to avoid being jailed.
They were nabbed on Dec. 28 after several weeks on the lam.
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/mom-affluenza-teen-ethan-couch-indicted-helping-son-escape-mexico-n580961

(CNN) Days before Jeffrey Wood was expected to be executed for his role in a deadly robbery 20 years ago, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Friday granted him a stay of execution.

eddie wrote:Apart from the fact we don't have the death sentence, (an issue I'm really undecided and divided, over), this execution simply wouldn't go ahead if this was the UK.

We are notoriously, and stupidly IMO, soft on criminals.

Quill mentioned the reason execution is going ahead - due to the law - but without sounding harsh, Texas in particular, seems a little behind when it comes to this sort of thing and they do like an execution in Texas!

Texas Gov. Rick Perry holds the record on executions

Robert Barnes  August 23, 2011   
Texas Gov. Rick Perry brings to the presidential race a law-and-order credential that none of his competitors can match — even if they wanted to.
In his nearly 11 years as the state’s chief executive, Perry, now running for the Republican presidential nomination, has overseen more executions than any governor in modern history:234 and counting. That’s more than the combined total in the next two states — Oklahoma and Virginia — since the death penalty was restored 35 years ago.
The number is partly explained by sheer longevity at the helm of a huge state that has mastered the complicated legal maze of carrying out capital punishment.
But Perry has hardly shrunk from the task.
As the 2012 presidential race unfolds, Perry’s record will inevitably become part of the debate in a country where the number of death sentences handed down continues to fall and some states are renouncing executions. Polls show that capital punishment remains both popular and controversial. And although all of Perry’s main competitors, including President Obama, support the death penalty, Perry’s role stands out.
He vetoed a bill that would have spared the mentally retarded, and sharply criticized a Supreme Court ruling that juveniles were not eligible for the death penalty. He has found during his tenure only one inmate on Texas’s crowded death row he thought should receive the lesser sentence of life in prison.
And Perry’s role in the 2004 execution of Cameron Todd Wil­lingham — who supporters said should have been at least temporarily spared when experts warned that faulty forensic science led to his conviction — is still the subject of investigation in Texas.
Perry has been unapologetic.  “If you don’t support the death penalty and citizens packing a pistol, don’t come to Texas,” he wrote in his book lauding states’ rights,  “Fed Up!”
It is a bipartisan tradition. The annual rate of executions was actually higher when George W. Bush was the state’s governor, and Democratic Gov. Ann Richards oversaw 50 executions during her four-year term without ever granting clemency.

“In the big picture, it is hard to see how Perry is much different from Bush or Richards,” said Jordan Steiker, co-director of the University of Texas Law School’s Capital Punishment Center.
That’s partly because Texans and their representatives give governors little room to slow down the process.  Decisions to seek the death penalty are made by local prosecutors. Unlike in some states, the governor does not sign death warrants or set execution dates. The state constitution prohibits the governor from calling a moratorium on executions and allows clemency only when the Board of Pardons and Paroles recommends it, which is rarely.
Texas’s relatively streamlined process for death penalty appeals is overseen by an elected court not known for reversals. Federal lawsuits go to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in New Orleans, which has the same reputation.
“In many states, executions are blocked because the state courts, the federal courts or both are intensely hostile to capital punishment and look for any excuse to overturn convictions,” said Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the pro-death-penalty Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in California. “So the short answer to why Texas has the most executions is (1) size, and (2) not being obstructed by hostile courts.”
Still, Perry has been an aggressive advocate. He battled the Bush administration in the Supreme Court when the president tried to force state courts to review the death sentences of 51 Mexican nationals who had not been allowed to consult Mexican authorities.  The court ruled in Perry’s favor, 6 to 3.

Last month, the Obama administration and governments around the world asked Perry to delay the execution of Humberto Leal Jr., a Mexican national who faced execution for raping and killing a 16-year-old in San Antonio. Perry declined and Leal was executed July 7.
Although Leal’s innocence was not at issue, death penalty opponents say 12 men on Texas’s death row have been exonerated. Anthony Graves is the latest, spending 18 years in prison before a Texas Monthly investigation showed his innocence.
Perry signed a bill awarding Graves $1.45 million in compensation but denied his imprisonment was an indictment of the Texas system.  “He’s a good example of, you continue to find errors that were made and clear them up,” Perry told the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. “So I think our system works well, it goes through many layers of observation and appeal, et cetera.”
Such statements do not endear him to opponents of capital punishment. “We’d like to get rid of him,” said Scott Cobb of the Texas Moratorium Network, “but not by giving him to the rest of the country.”
Despite the limits on power, law professor Steiker said that “it is fair to say a Texas governor is responsible for every execution.” If he is particularly concerned about a case, the governor may halt the process for 30 days and use the “bully pulpit” to express those doubts, Steiker said. Although a majority of the pardon board must recommend clemency, its members are appointed by Perry and beholden to him.
Perry’s lone clemency decision — aside from halting executions of the mentally retarded and juveniles dictated by the Supreme Court — came in the case of a man who drove the getaway car and was not the triggerman in a murder. Perry called for the legislature to reexamine the law, but it has not been changed.
After Perry signed a law offering life without the possibility of parole as an alternative to the death penalty, the total number of death sentences in Texas dropped, as it has in other states, from 23 in 2004 to eight in 2010, according to the anti-capital-punishment Death Penalty Information Center.
But what is likely to draw the most attention as Perry campaigns is the case of Willingham, who was convicted in 1991 of setting fire to his home and killing his three young daughters. Shortly before his 2004 execution, defense attorneys gave Perry and the pardon board a report from an arson expert saying the forensic evidence used to convict Willingham was severely flawed.
Perry went ahead with the execution, and has refused to release information from his advisers about the evidence.  The state forensic science commission began to review the case and the state’s arson unit after investigative journalists cast increasing doubt on Willingham’s guilt. But just before the commission was to hear from an investigator it had hired, Perry dismissed the chairman and replaced three members of the commission.
Perry’s newly installed chairman, a prosecutor who had called Willingham a “guilty monster,” delayed the commission’s hearings and asked the attorney general for an opinion about whether the commission could actively investigate the Willingham case. Attorney General Greg Abbott (R) said last month that it could not.  Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, who unsuccessfully challenged Perry in the 2010 Republican primary, tried to make an issue of the Willingham case, accusing Perry of “trying to ramrod a covering-up.”
Perry fired back through a spokeswoman that critics “should just say so” if they oppose the death penalty for a man who killed his children and beat his wife and whose conviction had been upheld by numerous courts.  On the campaign trail last week, Perry was asked how he defended the cost and inefficiency of the death penalty. He said it was a decision to be made by states, and “in the state of Texas, our citizens have clearly said that they support by overwhelming majority capital punishment.”
If others disagree, he said, they should try to pass a constitutional amendment to halt the death penalty. “I just lay it out there as an issue for Americans,” he said. “I will suggest to you that I’m going to work a whole lot harder on a balanced budget amendment to the United States constitution than I am for an amendment that will ban capital punishment.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/rick-perry-holds-the-record-on-executions/2011/08/17/gIQAMvNwYJ_story.html

Original Quill wrote:

Ben Reilly wrote:Okay, but it's a horrible law to begin with.

Absolutely.  The rule dates back to the 12th-century, and is as old as it is barbaric.  Wiki recounts the history of felony murder:

Wiki wrote:The rule has been abolished in England and Wales and in Northern Ireland.  In Canada, it has been held to be unconstitutional, as breaching the principles of fundamental justice, an interpretation unique to Canada.  In some jurisdictions (such as Victoria, Australia), the common law felony murder (called constructive murder) rule has been abolished, but has been replaced by a similar statutory provision in the Crimes Act 1958.  Similarly, in NSW (New South Wales), common law has been overridden and the question needs only be dealt with through statutory construction and application

The rule originates from the concept of transferred intent.  The reasoning is, if you start something criminal, you are responsible for the consequences, however weird and unpredictable the consequences come about.  In fact, felony murder has been upheld even when the killer is a policeman, who uses his gun to kill one of the other perps.

Some jurisdictions in America require that the underlying felony be a violent, highly dangerous one--not as in the example Bee suggests, financial transactions.  But here, just sitting in a car and waiting, wouldn't absolve the perp, as the underlying robbery was still a major, violent felony.  He was part of the conspiratorial union that undertook the crime.

BBC wrote: "...was abolished in England and Wales by section 1 of the Homicide Act 1957, and in Northern Ireland by section 8 of the Criminal Justice Act (Northern Ireland) 1966; but its effect is preserved by the application of the Common Law principle of "Joint Enterprise". In England and Wales, the definition of murder requires only an intent to cause grievous bodily harm to the victim, rather than specific intent to kill; the effect is the same as that of the felony murder rule applied to crimes of personal violence, though not to all felonies."

Texas court halts death sentence for man who did not kill anyone
BY Chris Sommerfeldt
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Updated: Tuesday, August 23, 2016, 5:53 AM


Jeffrey Wood was sentenced to death for the shooting of a 31-year-old store clerk during a robbery, even though he did not fire the fatal shot  (AP)   
BY Chris Sommerfeldt

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Updated: Tuesday, August 23, 2016, 5:53 AM
  Dead man’s not walking — yet.

A court halted the execution of a 43-year-old Texas man set to die by lethal injection for a fatal 1996 robbery in which he didn’t pull the trigger.

Jeffrey Wood could draw a temporary sigh of relief after the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled 7-2 on Friday to put his execution on hold.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/texas-court-halts-death-sentence-man-not-kill-article-1.2761644

Original Quill wrote:It's only a stay of execution.  These happen all the time, in every jurisdiction.  A sequence of pauses before the final execution.

This is what's so frustrating to conservatives: the death penalty takes too long.  But he's not out of the woods.  Look at the stats you just published, 4Eva...almost twice a many executed in Texas as the next state, Georgia (805 to 419).

I'm not giving him good odds.

Original Quill wrote:Bentley is an excellent case in point.  The actual killer could not be executed because he was underage.  Derek Bentley, the accomplice, was hanged on January 28, 1953.

The felony murder rule...

BBC wrote: "...was abolished in England and Wales by section 1 of the Homicide Act 1957, and in Northern Ireland by section 8 of the Criminal Justice Act (Northern Ireland) 1966; but its effect is preserved by the application of the Common Law principle of "Joint Enterprise". In England and Wales, the definition of murder requires only an intent to cause grievous bodily harm to the victim, rather than specific intent to kill; the effect is the same as that of the felony murder rule applied to crimes of personal violence, though not to all felonies."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felony_murder_rule

Wiki wrote:Abbott was only the second Republican to serve as Attorney General of Texas since Reconstruction. Prior to assuming the office of Attorney General, he was a justice on the Texas Supreme Court, a position to which he was initially appointed in 1995 by then-Governor George W. Bush. He is noted outside of Texas for successfully advocating the right of the state of Texas to display the Ten Commandments in front of the Texas State Capitol in Austin, in a 2005 United States Supreme Court case known as Van Orden v. Perry.

*  *  *  *

On January 8, 2016, Abbott called for a national constitutional convention to address what he sees as abuses by justices of the United States Supreme Court in "abandoning the Constitution." Abbott proposed passing nine new amendments to the Constitution, intended to limit the power of the federal government and expand states rights. Speaking to the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Abbott said, "We the people have to take the lead to restore the rule of law in the United States."

During the 2015 legislative session, initiated by officials at the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, the Texas Legislature placed a rider in the Texas budget to cut $150 million from its budget by ending payments and coverage for various developmental therapies for children on Medicaid. A lawsuit has been filed against the state on behalf of affected families and therapy providers, claiming it can cause irreparable damage to the affected children's development. The litigation obtained a temporary injunction order on September 25, 2015, barring THHSC from implementing therapy rate cuts.