(August 21, 2008)—Texas death row inmate Jeffery Wood won at least a temporary reprieve Thursday, just hours before he was to have been executed in Huntsville for his role in a deadly convenience store robbery in 1996 in the Hill Country.
A federal judge granted a request by Wood's attorneys to delay the execution so they could hire a mental health expert to pursue their arguments that he is incompetent to be executed.
Wood would have been the ninth condemned prisoner put to death this year and the fifth this month in the nation's busiest capital punishment state.
Wood's lawyers don't dispute that the convicted killer deserves punishment for his role in the 1996 convenience store holdup in which store clerk Kriss Keeran died, but they and Wood’s supporters contend he doesn't deserve to die.
They say he was waiting in the getaway car outside the store in Kerrville when Keeran was killed.
The gunman who killed Keeran with a gunshot to the face, Daniel Reneau, has already been put to death.
Attorney Scott Sullivan says "a non-triggerman shouldn't get he death penalty.”
Wood was convicted under the Texas law of parties, which makes accomplices as liable as the actual killer in capital murder cases.
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