Charles Hood was placed in the death cham­ber sev­er­al times on June 17 before Texas announced that it would be unable to fol­low its lethal injec­tion pro­to­col pri­or to mid­night when the exe­cu­tion war­rant expired. The day was filled with appeal fil­ings, court deci­sions, and dis­missals right until the mid­night dead­line. The con­tro­ver­sy began a week ago when Hood’s attor­neys filed motions assert­ing that the pre­sid­ing judge and lead pros­e­cu­tor had a roman­tic rela­tion­ship dur­ing his mur­der tri­al. The fac­tors that held up the exe­cu­tion last night ​“have been pro­ce­dur­al and not about this issue between the tri­al judge and pros­e­cu­tor,” said Hood’s attor­ney Andrea Keilen. ​“We’re hop­ing some court will look at this [rela­tion­ship] issue,” she added.

After the prison could not meet the exe­cu­tion dead­line, Governor Rick Perry issued a one-time 30-day reprieve. Earlier in the day, the judge who signed Hood’s death war­rant with­drew the war­rant and recused him­self from fur­ther pro­ceed­ings. However, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals held that the low­er court lacked the author­i­ty to with­draw the war­rant and ordered a new judge to rein­state the case.

Ms. Keilen, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Texas Defender Service, said, ​“We’ve had a lot of cas­es in Texas that defy com­mon sense, but this does reach a new low.” Lawrence Fox, a lawyer and pro­fes­sor of judi­cial ethics at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard com­ment­ed, ​“These pro­ceed­ings are far too sus­cep­ti­ble to human error and call into ques­tion if we ought to impose the ulti­mate sanc­tion.” If the exe­cu­tion had been car­ried out, Mr. Hood would have been the 407th per­son to be exe­cut­ed in Texas.
(A. Ellick, ​“Time Runs Out for Execution in Texas,” New York Times, June 18, 2008). Terry Lyn Short was exe­cut­ed on June 17 in Oklahoma, becom­ing the 7th per­son exe­cut­ed in 2008. See Arbitrariness.

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