Texas Prisoner Who Did Not Kill Anyone Challenges Execution, Use of False Psychiatrist Testimony to Condemn Him to Die

Lawyers for Jeffery Wood (pic­tured), a Texas death row pris­on­er who is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed August 24 despite undis­put­ed evi­dence that he has nev­er killed any­one, have filed a new peti­tion in state court chal­leng­ing his death sen­tence on mul­ti­ple grounds. They argue that Wood can­not be sub­ject to the death penal­ty because he nei­ther killed nor intend­ed for any­one to be killed and was not even aware the rob­bery in which a code­fen­dant killed a store clerk was going to occur. They also chal­lenge his death sen­tence on the gounds that it was obtained based upon false and sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly base­less tes­ti­mo­ny from a dis­cred­it­ed psy­chi­a­trist that Wood would pose a future dan­ger to society. 

Wood was con­vict­ed of cap­i­tal mur­der under the Texas doc­trine called the ​“law of par­ties,” which employs an unusu­al­ly broad inter­pre­ta­tion of accom­plice lia­bil­i­ty to make a defen­dant liable for the acts of oth­ers. He was sen­tenced to death for his alleged role in the mur­der of a store clerk in 1996 com­mit­ted by anoth­er man, Daniel Reneau, while Wood was out­side sit­ting in a truck. Reneau was exe­cut­ed in 2002. 

Wood says he and Reneau had planned to rob the store the pre­vi­ous day, but that he had backed out. According to Wood, he did not know Reneau still planned to rob the store, or that Reneau had a gun with him. Jared Tyler, one of Wood’s attor­neys, said, ​“I believe that no per­son in the his­to­ry of the mod­ern death penal­ty has been exe­cut­ed with as lit­tle cul­pa­bil­i­ty and par­tic­i­pa­tion in the tak­ing of a life as Mr. Wood.” 

Wood’s appeal also alleges that his right to due process was vio­lat­ed when the state pre­sent­ed false and mis­lead­ing tes­ti­mo­ny from psy­chi­a­trist James Grigson, who earned the nick­name ​“Dr. Death” for tes­ti­fy­ing in numer­ous Texas cap­i­tal cas­es that the defen­dant would ​“cer­tain­ly” or ​“absolute­ly” or ​“with 100% cer­tain­ty” com­mit future acts of vio­lence, includ­ing sev­er­al cas­es in which defen­dants lat­er turned out to be inno­cent. Three years before Wood’s hear­ing, Grigson was expelled from the Texas Society of Psychiatric Physicians and the American Psychiatric Association for eth­i­cal vio­la­tions involv­ing mak­ing psy­chi­atric diag­noses with­out hav­ing exam­ined cap­i­tal defen­dants, pre­dict­ing with cer­tain­ty that they would engage in future vio­lent acts, and bas­ing those pre­dic­tions on hypo­thet­i­cal ques­tions posed by the pros­e­cu­tion that con­tained ​“gross­ly inad­e­quate” infor­ma­tion. Nonetheless, based on a pros­e­cu­tion hypo­thet­i­cal ques­tion and with­out hav­ing eval­u­at­ed Wood, Grigson tes­ti­fied that Wood would ​“cer­tain­ly” pose a con­tin­u­ing threat to society. 

Wood’s jury was nev­er told that Grigson had been expelled for sim­i­lar con­duct or that the pro­fes­sion­al asso­ci­a­tions had deter­mined that his prac­tices were uneth­i­cal and unscientific.

[UPDATE: On August 19, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals grant­ed a stay of exe­cu­tion to per­mit Wood to lit­i­gate his claims that the pros­e­cu­tion had pre­sent­ed false sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence and that the use of false tes­ti­mo­ny from Dr. Grigson vio­lat­ed due process.]