Courts Put Upcoming Texas, Louisiana Executions on Hold

On March 11, in sep­a­rate deci­sions, a fed­er­al court in Louisiana and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) stayed the upcom­ing exe­cu­tions of David Wood (sched­uled for exe­cu­tion in Texas on March 13) and Jessie Hoffman (sched­uled for exe­cu­tion in Louisiana on March 18). In Mr. Wood’s case, the TCCA grant­ed a stay of exe­cu­tion to allow the state more time to address the eight claims Mr. Wood assert­ed in his state habeas claim. In Mr. Hoffman’s case, the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana grant­ed his request for a pre­lim­i­nary injunc­tion based on Mr. Hoffman’s claim that the deci­sion by the Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections (DPSC) to change the method of exe­cu­tion planned for Mr. Hoffman from lethal injec­tion to nitro­gen hypox­ia con­sti­tutes cru­el and usu­al pun­ish­ment under the Eighth Amendment.

On March 11, 2025, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) issued a stay of exe­cu­tion for David Wood, sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed March 13, 2025. Convicted and sen­tenced to death for the 1987 mur­ders of six girls and young women in the El Paso area, Mr. Wood has main­tained his inno­cence for more than 30 years. In recent court fil­ings his attor­ney has pre­sent­ed new evi­dence sup­port­ing Mr. Wood’s claim of inno­cence and has con­tin­u­ous­ly sought DNA test­ing that they believe could prove his claim. ​“I could nev­er quit fight­ing,” Mr. Wood told The Guardian before the TCCA issued its rul­ing. ​“This case is built on coer­cion, cor­rup­tion and lies. Not a shred of my DNA con­nects me to any of these cases.” 

The prosecution’s case against Mr. Wood relied large­ly on cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence, with no DNA evi­dence link­ing him to the killings. In 2024, George Hall came for­ward in an affi­davit that casts doubt on the cred­i­bil­i­ty of two jail­house infor­mants whose tes­ti­mo­ny was essen­tial to Mr. Wood’s con­vic­tion. In a sworn state­ment, Mr. Hall, who was incar­cer­at­ed with Mr. Wood and the two jail­house infor­mants, claims that detec­tives pres­sured him and fel­low pris­on­ers to lie that Mr. Wood con­fessed to the killings but Mr. Hall said he refused and that he ​“wasn’t going to rail­road David Wood.” In his state­ment, Mr. Hall also said he had informed pros­e­cu­tors in 1991 that James Sweeney and Randy Wells, the two infor­mants on record in the case, had fab­ri­cat­ed their sto­ries about Mr. Wood’s con­fes­sion — for which Mr. Sweeney received a $13,000 reward and Mr. Wells had a cap­i­tal mur­der charge dis­missed. According to Greg Wiercioch, Mr. Wood’s attor­ney, Mr. Hall’s new signed dec­la­ra­tion was a ​“bomb­shell” and ​“this is what [coun­sel and Mr. Wood] sus­pect­ed all along but had no hard and fast proof of.” 

Mr. Wiercioch also points to a 1990 memo from pros­e­cu­tors indi­cat­ing they ini­tial­ly didn’t have enough evi­dence to indict Mr. Wood and that the truck Mr. Wood alleged­ly used to car­ry out these mur­ders was in a sal­vage yard at the time three of the young girls went miss­ing. In 2024, a woman also came for­ward and told Mr. Wood’s coun­sel that she believed her father, who was con­vict­ed of anoth­er mur­der and since died, may have been respon­si­ble for these six mur­ders, as well. 

Mr. Wood’s coun­sel has been fight­ing unsuc­cess­ful­ly for DNA test­ing for more than a decade. Mr. Wiercioch expressed his frus­tra­tion, telling USA Today that ​“To this day, it is still mind-bog­gling why (the state) didn’t agree to more testing…I think they’re afraid of what they would find. If they believe David Wood is the desert ser­i­al mur­der­er, the 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 TCCA’s order will allow the state time to review Mr. Wood’s legal argu­ments, includ­ing claims of false tes­ti­mo­ny, sup­pressed evi­dence, and inef­fec­tive coun­sel. Mr. Wood also received a favor­able rul­ing from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in a par­al­lel fed­er­al process. The Fifth Circuit grant­ed an addi­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ty for Mr. Wood’s coun­sel to present its case, focus­ing specif­i­cal­ly on a piece of poten­tial­ly excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence. According to Mr. Wood’s coun­sel, a woman who pre­vi­ous­ly tes­ti­fied that Mr. Wood raped her lat­er admit­ted to some­one else that her assailant was a dif­fer­ent man. Her tes­ti­mo­ny was an essen­tial aspect of the prosecution’s case, as it helped estab­lish the perpetrator’s modus operan­di. The fed­er­al court empha­sized the sig­nif­i­cance of this rev­e­la­tion, stat­ing that if tes­ti­mo­ny cast­ing doubt on this woman’s claims had not been with­held, it ​“would have destroyed the state’s case so thor­ough­ly that every rea­son­able juror would have had a rea­son­able doubt about Wood’s guilt.” 

Mr. Hoffman was sen­tenced to death by lethal injec­tion in 1998 for the mur­der of Mary ​“Molly” Elliot. In his fil­ing with the U.S. District Court, Mr. Hoffman argued that the February 20, 2025, deci­sion by the DPSC Secretary Gary Wescott to change the method of exe­cu­tion from lethal injec­tion to nitro­gen hypox­ia con­sti­tutes cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment under the Eighth Amendment because of the sub­stan­tial risk of severe psy­cho­log­i­cal pain, com­pared to exe­cu­tion by lethal injec­tion. U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick agreed, cit­ing to the tes­ti­mo­ny of Dr. Bickler, an expert called by Mr. Hoffman’s attor­neys, who not­ed that hypox­ia ​“pro­duces a ter­ror response” that is akin to a ​“forced asphyx­i­a­tion” caus­ing ​“extreme dis­com­fort, dis­tress, pain and ter­ror[.]” Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill indi­cat­ed imme­di­ate­ly after the District Court’s announce­ment that her office would appeal the decision.

Judge Shelly also drew atten­tion to the fact that in the four exe­cu­tions by nitro­gen hypox­ia to date (all of which took place in Alabama over the past thir­teen months) it was the indi­vid­ual to be exe­cut­ed, not the head of the cor­rec­tions depart­ment that made the deci­sion which method of exe­cu­tion would be used. In Louisiana, under the method of exe­cu­tion is del­e­gat­ed to the dis­cre­tion of the DPSC Secretary (La. R. S. § 15:69(A)). In Alabama, that deci­sion is made by the indi­vid­ual to be exe­cut­ed. (Ala. Code § 15 – 18-82.1(a)). 

The Louisiana Legislature passed a bill in March 2024 autho­riz­ing the use of nitro­gen gas and elec­tro­cu­tion as meth­ods of exe­cu­tion. On February 10, 2025, Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry announced his deci­sion to end a 15-year pause on exe­cu­tions, not­ing DPSC was ready to car­ry out exe­cu­tions under a new nitro­gen gas exe­cu­tion pro­to­col. As Judge Shelly not­ed, DPSC has ​“refused to make the new nitro­gen pro­to­col avail­able” to either the pub­lic or Mr. Hoffman and only pro­vid­ed a redact­ed ver­sion of the pro­to­col a day before Mr. Hoffman’s March 7, 2025, hear­ing to con­sid­er his request for pre­lim­i­nary injunc­tion. Louisiana’s lethal injec­tion pro­to­col has been under legal attack, includ­ing by Mr. Hoffman, for more than a decade, result­ing in a pro­longed pause in exe­cu­tions. The last exe­cu­tion in the state was in 2010. 

Nitrogen gas inhala­tion caus­es death by depriv­ing the body of oxy­gen by forc­ing an indi­vid­ual to inhale nitro­gen. Louisiana is only one of four states that autho­rizes exe­cu­tion by nitro­gen hypox­ia. The oth­er states are Oklahoma, Mississippi, and Alabama, and Alabama is the only state that used this method of execution.