(August 19, 20080--Attorneys for a Texas death row inmate want a judge to order a former judge and ex-prosecutor to answer allegations they had a secret and legally unethical romance that may have tainted the inmate’s trial.
Charles Dean Hood was scheduled for execution on June 17, but prolonged appeals eventually rejected by the courts stretched into the night.
State prison officials, concerned that their procedures couldn't be properly completed in time, called off Hood's lethal injection as the midnight expiration of the death warrant approached.
A state district judge in Collin County has since reset Hood's execution for Sept. 10, but Hood's attorneys contend the alleged relationship between Judge Verla Sue Holland and former Collin County District Attorney Tom O'Connell tainted the trial.
The now-retired Holland served as a judge on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in the mid-1990s and O'Connell is now in private practice.
Both have declined to address the allegations.
Hood was sentenced to die for the deaths of Tracie Lynn Wallace and her boyfriend, Ronald Williamson, at Williamson's home in Plano in 1989.
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