Amnesty
International
Jeffery Wood is
scheduled to be executed in Texas on 24 August. He was sentenced to death in
1998 for a murder committed during a robbery of a convenience store in 1996. He
was sitting in a truck outside the store when the murder took place.
Kriss Keeran was shot
dead in a Texaco store in Kerrville on 2 January 1996. Daniel Reneau, aged 20,
and 21-year-old Jeffery Wood, who lived in a trailer nearby, were arrested. It
is undisputed that Daniel Reneau committed the murder while Jeffery Wood waited
outside the store. Daniel Reneau was tried in 1997 and executed in 2002.
A prerequisite for a death sentence in
Texas is a jury finding of the defendant’s “future dangerousness.” At Jeffery
Wood’s sentencing, the prosecution called Dr James Grigson, a discredited
psychiatrist dubbed “Dr Death” who regularly testified at Texas capital
sentencings as to his certainty that the defendant would commit future acts of
violence, a form of testimony for which by 1998 he had already been expelled
from the American Psychiatric Association. The prosecution nevertheless
presented such testimony at Jeffery Wood’s trial, without informing the jury of
his expulsion. Meanwhile, the defense lawyers made no arguments, put on no
witnesses, and presented no mitigation evidence. They “sat mute” throughout,
noted the federal judge in 2005.
Click here for URGENT ACTION.
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