Texas 'Desert Killer' David Leonard Wood gets rare stay of execution: What to know
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals issued the stay "until further order of this court" without explanation. The order came just over 48 hours before Wood, 67, was set to be executed by lethal injection on Thursday.
Wood has been on Texas Death Row for nearly four decades even though no DNA evidence linked him to the murders of six women and girls in El Paso in 1987.
'I'm accused of killing six people when an entire police force couldn't find a single shred of evidence of anything,' Wood told USA TODAY on Feb. 26 during an interview at a Texas state prison north of Houston. 'How can I not be angry at the corruption that put me here? How can you let people just dump cases on you and not be angry?'
The incredible move by the Texas court came almost simultaneously as a federal judge in Louisiana temporarily blocked that state's first nitrogen gas execution, scheduled for March 18, ruling that it could cause the inmate "pain and terror" and violate his constitutional rights.
Here's what you need to know about Wood's case.
More from Texas death row: Robert Roberson again asks Texas' highest criminal court to free him, citing new evidence
A jury convicted Wood of killing six women and girls in 1987 in a case dubbed by local media as the "Desert Killer." The victims are: 14-year-old Dawn Marie Smith, 15-year-old Desiree Wheatley, 17-year-old Angelica Frausto, 20-year-old Karen Baker, 23-year-old Ivy Susanna Williams, and 24-year-old Rosa Maria Casio.
Their bodies were all found in various states of decomposition in shallow graves in the same desert area in northeast El Paso. Investigators couldn't determine how many of them were killed, though at least one had been strangled.
Police believed three missing girls – 12-year-old Melissa Alaniz, 14-year-old Marjorie Knox and 19-year-old Cheryl Vasquez-Dismukes − were also victims of the Desert Killer, but their bodies were never found.
Wood's conviction was based mainly on circumstantial evidence. No DNA evidence has ever connected him to the murders.
El Paso Assistant District Attorney Karen Shook told jurors during trial that the 'case in the totality points to David Wood.'
"It's clear that the signature aspect of these murders was the shallow graves in this dark, isolated desert area," she said. "It became the private graveyard of the defendant, David Wood."
Jurors heard testimony from two jailhouse informants who said Wood confessed to the killings, and a sex worker who said Wood raped her in the same desert area where the bodies were found and had begun digging her grave when a nearby noise startled him.
Wood, who was convicted of the sex worker's rape, told USA TODAY that all three were lying and were only helping prosecutors in exchange for leniency in their own cases. 'I've never confessed anything to anybody about anything,' he said.
In a recent court filing, Wood's attorneys said that both jailhouse informants and the sex worker either got many years shaved off of prison sentences or were seeking a financial reward. The filing also details a statement from a man named George Hall, who described how El Paso police tried to get him to lie that Wood had confessed to the murders while they were jailed together.
Additional testimony came from a 26-year-old woman who said Wood raped her under an El Paso bridge when she was 13, according to archived coverage by the Associated Press at the time. Another woman testified that she was 12 when Wood lured her by saying he needed help finding a lost dog and then raped her at a nearby construction site, AP reported.
The state's remaining evidence included testimony from witnesses saying they had seen some of the women and girls with Wood ahead of their murders and microscopic orange fibers that prosecutors argued connected one of the women's bodies with Wood's vacuum cleaner and a blanket in his truck.
Six of the justices voted to stay the execution, while Judge Mary Lou Keel and Judge Gina G. Parker voted against stopping it, records show. Judge Bert Richardson did not participate in the vote.
While the justices' motivations remain unclear, Wood has claimed his constitutional rights were violated in the following ways:
Wood's claiming he is innocent.
The state obtained a conviction by presenting false testimony.
The suppression of evidence in violation of Brady v. Maryland.
Claims that the state destroyed evidence in violation of due process.
Wood's trial counsel rendered ineffective assistance.
Wood's counsel represented him while operating under an actual conflict of interest.
Wood's rights to a unanimous jury verdict.
The confrontation of witnesses.
Wood's attorney, Gregory Wiercioch, told USA TODAY last week that the state's evidence connecting him to the murders is weak and criticized prosecutors for failing to test barely any of the items collected from the scene for DNA.
Only three pieces of evidence of hundreds were ever tested − fingernail scrapings from one victim and bloodstains on the clothing of two other victims. Tests on the fingernail scraping and one of the bloodstains were inconclusive. The other bloodstain belonged to a man but couldn't have been Wood's, new DNA testing obtained by defense attorneys in 2010 found.
'This is a serial murder case, a case with six victims, and in a serial murder case, I would expect the government, the state, to have a mountain of evidence − direct evidence tying David Wood to these victims, and there's not,' Wiercioch said. 'It's incomprehensible to me how little evidence there is.'
Wiercioch filed recent actions seeking to stop the execution with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Feb. 21. That court, the same one that issued Tuesday's stay of execution, rejected previous requests for more DNA testing.
"To this day, it is still mind-boggling why (the state) didn't agree to more testing," Wiercioch said. "I think they're afraid of what they would find. If they believe David Wood is the desert serial murderer, then why are they afraid of additional testing? We've never tested anything other than those three items out of 135, and one excluded David Wood. That's very troubling."
The Texas Attorney General's Office has not responded to repeated requests for comment from USA TODAY. The El Paso District Attorney's Office, which prosecuted the case, declined to comment about the strength of the evidence, saying it recused itself from the matter in 1993 over a conflict of interest.
This isn't the first time Wood's execution has been delayed. Just 24 hours before his scheduled execution in 2009, it was halted due to claims that Wood was intellectually disabled and therefore not fit for the death penalty, NBC News reports. A judge has since rejected the claims.
Jolieen Denise Gonzalez, 17-year-old victim Angelica Frausto's sister, told USA TODAY that Tuesday's development was 'fair.'
'I don't think he should die for my sister's murder,' Gonzalez said. 'I do not believe that I'm going to live to see my sister get justice.'
She previously told USA TODAY that she thought Wood helped plan her sister's murder but didn't kill her himself.
But Marcia Fulton, mother of 15-year-old victim Desiree Wheatley, told USA TODAY that she was disappointed in the stay but not surprised.
Fulton was planning to drive 720 miles from El Paso to Huntsville to witness Wood's execution on Thursday.
"I'm waiting for justice for my daughter because I promised her that at her gravesite. Each time this happens, it breaks my heart again, that I can't follow through," Fulton said. "Victims have no justice system. Disappointed yes, but it's not like I am waiting for him to die."
The execution of a death row inmate in South Carolina made national news last week.
Brad Keith Sigmon on Friday for the beating deaths of his ex-girlfriend's parents, marking the first firing squad execution in the state in modern history and the first in the U.S. since 2010.
How does a firing squad execution work? Brad Keith Sigmon executed in South Carolina in 'bloody spectacle'
— USA TODAY contributed to this report.
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas 'Desert Killer' David Leonard Wood gets rare stay of execution
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