Reflecting on an Arbitrary Legal System

I'm David Sanger I cover the White House and National seecurity at the New York Times, and I try to explain what decisions made in Washington mean for you wherever you live This is why the Times sends me to the Oval Office when the president is making a major decision or has me ride along on Air Force O on critical trips. And I talk to foreign leaders exploring why they're so often at odds with the United States We live in a world of misinformation and disinformation It's never been more important to have reliable sources of on the ground reporting If you want firsth reporting on how U. S. policy affects the world Consider subscribing to the New York Times On a warm day in early March, I meet Nayomi in Dallas We're in the final stretch of this case Exactly one week out from David Wood's execution date And now he's driving up to Death Row to visit him I can't be with her for the actual visit, but still, I'm tagging along for the ride. All of Naomi's visits with David have come with the stress of acoming execution But it's impossible to ignore the specific context here That is potentially her last visit with him I have been giving some thought to How to leave the conversation in the sense of You know, what what do we what do I say when it's time for me to go This particular question What do I say when it's time for me to go There's a thorny one for death penalty lawyers Be face to face with a perfectly healthy human being, as a moment of their death rapidly approaches painfully aware of its exact manner and timing. Greg describes this last interaction as deeply unnatural a conversation where language itself feels inadequate Naomi has been running scenarios in her head for how to leave it with David She tells me she was up at three thirty this morning trying to figure out just the right thing to say It's hard because you want to caring and you want to express compassion and But you also have to remain in the role of an attorney and like and Like I don't want to have like some sort of, on my part, like teary goodbye of like, I might never see you again. and you know, I want to be fair in the odds Right? which is like I could see you and I might not Naomi spends three hours inside Death Row I'm waiting for her in the parking lot when she gets out How did it go He didn't want to talk about the case, so I just told him a little bit about like next ups and what had happened. Nomi tells me she said maybe five sentences during their entire visit. Most of the rest of it was listening to David tell stories about his first stint in prison in a unit everyone called the Gladiator School About a summer, he spent his dad's hometown where he stole a bunch of fireworks, so his little cousins could set them off He also told me to never try shrooms An any any more on that or just blanket statement He said that u He'd seen things that A human should never have to see while he was you Toms and he's, you know, he's worried about Greg He's worried about his sister He said he was gonna be okay. Do you think he's gonna be okay I don't know I think so. I think I mean it Maybe I'm just trying to comfort myself, but He's really angry You know I did know that part from the hour Maurice and I spent with David. how angry he was about his case that wasn't hard to pick up on But Naomi had a different vantage point here Maybe a biased one, but no doubt a closer one. When her office first took on David's case, Naami agreed to help, but didn't want to go to death rrow to visit with him. Jeremy, her boss has always made it clear that these situations when it's very likely that their client will be executed within months It's not a requirement to go Greg told Naomi that her perspective and work on the case was something that David would want to hear about firsthand So she started heading down to see him Their relationship under those conditions grew quickly He sent her some of his paintings, and she started to see him as more than just a name on a legal filing Even though she hadd only known him for a few months, Naomi had a feel for his anxiety and fear She' come to know him in a way that defied easy category It's this really strange relationship that is Not a friendship although it can sometimes feel like one Like how do we describe Not only like that relationship, but the grief of maybe losing that person like What am I really sad about here particularly when as far as the outside world knows David Wood is a serial killer who also has a veryer violent criminal record of crimes against children. And I know like every time I, you know, like in the microphone say that like I'm sad I'm like, Ohh, I can just hear the Well, the families of the victims are sad because they never got this time either The thing as Alvin is if David Wood is executed and there are family members who are seeking Cosure and peace from that I hope they get it because otherwise It is truly, truly pointless. How did you leave it I told him that I really, really, really hope I get to see him again I really hope we get a stay From Serial Productions, the New York Times, and the Marshall Project, I'm Alvin Melleth. And I'm Maurice Shamal This is the final episode of the last twelve weeks. This week on the Wirecutter showow The Cost of consumer tech products, laptops, phones, gaming consoles is climbing. We have built a world that makes people need this stuff. and increasingly, it's going to be very difficult for a broad category of people to afford. What's driving it and what can we do about it? Find out wherever you get your podcast Thairness six days until David Wood's execution date For this final stretch, Alvin is with Naomi and Jeremy in Dallas I'm with Greg, who's couple hundred miles away in Livingston, Texas For this final push in the case, Greg has decided to set up a one man war room at a holiday inn here About fifteen minutes from Dath row He's in a pretty spartan suite on the third floor that overlooks a parking lot and a dollar store A desk covered in papers, a small mountain of bottled drinks, He's got more than one novel on his bedstand, which seems a little optimistic given the circumstances. Greg could do his legal work from anywhere with an interternet connection But he chooses to do it from here so that he can visit David as much as possible in these next few days That and because it was in this exact holiday inn years ago that he want to stay of execution for another client He figures he'll take all the luck he can get I plop down on a faux leeather couch in his room as he gets to work The legal specifics of what Greg and the other lawyers are going to be up to and the run up to the execution are interesting, and I'll get to them But there is one not strictly legal thing I've been wondering about this moment for Greg. I'm curious about his relationship with David what potentially losing him might mean for Greg He explains it to me by way of comparison A lot of his other death row clients, Greg tells me, have had severe mental illnesses like schizophrenia Communicating with them could be challenging Greg cared for these men and fought for them, but he wouldn't describe those relationships as all that close Certainly not as close as the one I've had with David. And yes, I've gotten to know him fairly well over the years Now sixteen years. Over those sixteen years, Greg has shared more about his personal life with David than he otherwise might have with a client. When Greg's father was suffering from Alzheimer's, David asked if he could pray for him H painted him a card that Greg put in his father's room Greg saw David through the death of his younger brother, and has gotten close with David's sister too I was surprised that these men with their wildly different life experiences and temperaments, both referred to each other as brothers David's allowed to invite up to five people to witness his execution And it's common to invite family Greg thinks there's a chance David will ask him. David hasn't brought it up yet And Greg is sort of hoping he doesn't He's never watched one of his clients be executed before He always worried that the trauma of it would make it harder for him to do his job But Greg says, if David doesn't have anyone else, he'll be there He doesn't want David to face death alone In any case, this is probably the last time Greg will be in this position He turned sixteen not long ago And though he isn't planning to retire anytime soon, he's also not planning to take on new death row clients. Another capital case at this point, given how long they last, might outlive him. So in all likelihood, David will be his last death row client These are the things weighing on Greg's mind as he prepares for all the work ahead of him, most likely firing off responses to whatever court decisions and prosecution briefs come out this week To that end, he stocked his mini fridge with yogurt and what I'd call an apocalyptic amount of blueberries. So he never asked to leave the room for breakfast. He's got his other meals covered too. So I like to have a turkey sandwich every day for lunch. So I've got my bread, I've got my prorocessed turkey, and I've got my cheese, swissened cheddar. got my mustard. Greg's paltate, I should note is something of a running joke on the defense team. I myself have gotten pretty stressed out watching a mortder at restaurants, asking the server to substitute or remove anything that sounds spicy or honestly like flavorful at all He's saving the real treat, a pint of Ben and Jerry's for when this is all over Iceice creamy figures will be helpful no matter how this turns out Is Greg doing well Back in Dallas, Naomi and Jeremy and the rest of the defense team are taking a little break from their legal strategizing to figure out a care package for Greg that might suit his specific dietary desires I know he likes gatorade. He likes plain chicken. Plain chicken. Itenters of raw chicken. With delivery order done and dusted, the team in Dallas turns back to their to do list following up on all the legal filings and petitions they're working on They lay some of the options out, I think mostly for my benefit on a whiteboard with marker. Okay You can be here, which is this iss not gonna to work. I've got black. There are four main avenues the lawyers are exploring to stop David Wood's execution. All four are long shots at this point, but some more than others I'm going to quickly spell them out, roughly from the least likely to the most promising The least likely route by far is that the governor of Texas will intervene He could issue a thirty day reprieve or else his appointees on the Texas Board of Pardons and Pearles could vote to commute the sentence and you could approve it This is extremely uncommon. The current governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, has commuted exactly one death sentence since he came into office more than a decade ago The second Avenue, the US. Supreme Court, is slightly more likely than the governor to stop the execution but only by little They do stay executions, but it's increasingly rare It requires the lawyers thinking up a unique legal claim that'll hook a justice or two In some ways, the more technical and incremental stuff usually works better But the lawyers are also ready with a last ditch moonshot If all else fails The last of justice is toule on whether it's kosher, legally speaking to execute someone who has proven their innocence Believe it or not This is not yet a settled matter of constitutional law The third avenue is a federal circuit court. Specifically, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which deals with all the death penalty appeals in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas courts are broadly speaking more challenging to death row claims in state courts And the fifth circuit, one of the most conservative in the country is notoriously unfriendly to Dath Row claims Between two thousand seven and twenty twenty, they granted habbeas relief to just one death row prisoner in Texas, one out of one hundred and fifty one Which brings us to the last avenue, the highest state Ct for criminal cases in Texas, the CCA, the Court of Criminal Appeals If there's any one court the team is pinning their hopes on, it's the CCA. But to call it the most promising is maybe your reach. It's mostly by process of elimination. The CCA has historically stayed very few executions. But if the defense team squints, they can find a bit of silver lining A few months ago, three new judges were elected to the bench. All three are conservative Republicans. But there's at least some uncertainty in how these new judges might rule. This mystery is what passes for optimism with habeas lawyers With less than a week to go until the execution date, the team, weirdly, doesn't have much to do but wait. They submitted what they needed to to the governor and to the CCA. Now they're just adding their finishing touches to their federal petition and Supreme Court filings before they send those off All of which has led to what I've observed in the hallways in Dallas has a very particular energy. Boredom operating occasionally on a knife's edge been called out for sometimes capitalizing the tea and sometimes not capitalizing the tea in T shirt Do we have a preference I've struggle to think of anything I gave less of a shit about than whether we capitalized a T and T shirt right now Jeremy, in particular seems pent up very all dressed up with nowhere to go on march tenth, three days before the execution date He tried to busy himself with work usually done by the office paralegal I spied him shuffling back and forth from his office all the way down the corridor to the printer, multiple times, personally printing copies of a writ they werere going to send to the Supreme Court, personally stapling them ood staple glamorous life of a lawyer The next day, on march eleventh, I got to the office a little late Honestly, partly because I'd spent several days in a row recording the functional equivalent of dead air for hours I check in with Jeremy. Did I miss anything You missed absolutely nothing. In fact, I think we obviously never know when the court opinions are going to come down, but I think it's likely we have a relatively quiet morning. And for a little bit, it seems like Jeremy's right. Everyone is sitting quietly at their computers I roam the halls of the office, feeling a little silly, wondering if pointing my microphone at Naomi's typing is a better use of my time than pointing my microphone at Jeremy staring at the screen And then suddenly, something happens that nobody was expecting fifth circuit, the federal appeals courourt hands down their ruling. The lawyers are confused Because in their experience, the fifth circuit usually waits until the CCA acts in these cases The federal courts don't tend to rule before the state courts they have this time The whole office goes into a tailpin. Jeremy says he's never seen this before. He calls Greg, desperate to get him on the phone to figure this out Frank doesn't pick Jeremy wonders aloud if he's on a treadmill. What's the fucking Christ? Pick up your goddamn phone, Greg What little restraint Jeremy is shown in this podcast with regard to cursing is now completely out the window While Jeremy waits on Greg to respond, he skims the fifth circuit ruling One thing that jumps out, Ramona dismkes Ramona, remember, is a woman who met the lawyers at a Waterberurger who told them about the wild plant she and her mother came up with to try and lure out the desert killer on their own But my mom was literally tricking me. She was like, list sit on that wall and somebody's going to come and try to kidnap you and I'll call the cops and we'll get them Bamona was also the person who offered the lawyers an explanation for why a woman named Judith Kelling said Davidood rape her. One of the foundations of his death sentence. This is what she's telling me. They made a deal with me to get me out of jail. and all I gotta do is testify against this guy. I was like, well were you even raped? She's like, yeah, but not by him.'mike Wh who? She said, Mike Pler, I'm like, Who's this guy Ramona D Smees was never called to testify in the Cital Murder trial And so the jury never heard that claim. circuit right If Desmuks had testified to the facts, she states in her declaration that Kelling identified Pler as her attacker, but falsely framed wood, that would have destroyed the state's case so thoroughly that every reasonable juror would have had a reasonable doubt about Wood's guilt So I mean, this is one of the most powerful statements I've ever seen the Fth Circuit make Wow, I mean, that is, I mean, really Re an incredible statement It turns out the Fifth Circuit authorized some of the defense team's claims, including Romona's meaning they'd like a lower court to take a look at them There's also a catch He explains it to Greg when he finally gets him on the phone He was, in fact, on the treadmill All right, there's Greg Greg. I'm walking now. so I thought Id about a half hour of peace, but not apparently not. What's going on No, so we've got incredible news and crazy fucking news. All right So the Fth Circuit authorized The Brady and part of the false testimony claim, but they didn't stay the execution. Jesus In other words, for the defense team, this is roughly the equivalent of the fifth Circuit saying We suspect something really fishy going on here But we arere not going to be the ones to stop this execution Jeremy snaps into action. actuallyctually snaps so fast that he runs into me as he's barking out orders to one of the lawyers. Claire, Jee I' sorry, I ate the fucking microphone.' I turned on a dime and Alvin wasn't quick enough. Can you draft a proposed order for the Northern District for the stay motion? Let's get that done. Naomi just very briefly, I just told this to Claire, we're going to attach Mona's declaration to this The machine wearing it into action is impressive to watch The lawyers start typing away They're trying to file a motion for a stay in a lower federal court to see if they'll stop the execution, even though the Fth Circuit refused to Everyone seems somewhat gobsack that this is all happening because of something Ramona Dmukes declared at a waterburger two months ago. Officially exhibit number sixty two and the defense filings. Exhibit sixty two is the winner The most important of one hundred and fifteen. Two pages Funny how this shit works sometimes, isn't it As the lawyers are busy, trying to figure out how to deal with this unexpected development from the federal courts, they get some more news The state just filed their response in the CCA. Are you serious? Yeah. It's very timely of them Why fucking morning, some assholes said not too long ago. The prosecution has its say about David Wood That's after the break Hi, this is Andy. I've been a New York Times subscriber for years and years and I'm trying to get my teenagers interested in reading it If they were to have their own logins and we could share articles, I think that would help get them interested. It would also then allow us to discuss them with the dinner table or wherever Thank you very much Andy, we heard you It's why we created the New York Times Family subscription. One subscription up to four separate logins for anyone in your life Find out more at nYimes d. com slash famamily One of the more challenging aspects of making this podcast has been getting the prosecution side of David Wood's case We've been trying to get someone from the state of Texas to talk to us for months We asked the Office of Attorney General Ken Paxton for an interview multiple times No response We even knocked on the doors of the two original trial prosecutors in El Paso and sent them letters. We never heard back But on Tuesday morning, shortly after the fififth Circuit ruling sends the lawyers into a frenzy The state of Texas finally issues its own giant brief in the case. twowo days before the execution is scheduled The attttorney general's office officially responds to each of the defense team's claims. Because the prosecutors wouldn't talk to us, this is our first real window into how they see all the new evidence It's sixty three pages, and I would characterize it all as the written equivalent of an eye roll likeike this again. prorosecution writes, none of Wood's evidence is actually new. Nor is it exculpatory Take the DNA One of the biggest pieces of evidence that Greg wrote about was a blood spot on a piece of victim' clothing that belonged to a male contributor, who's not David Wood. This is the reason Greg still wants to get a bunch of the other evidence in the case tested too The prosecutionites, quote The presence of that DNA means nothing more than another man came into contact with that clothing. It doesn't mean David Wood is innocent Rromona dis mukes. who the Fth Circuit had singled out in their own ruling just hours earlier? Well, the AG's office have the opposite reaction to her claims They write that Dmukes has, quote, serious credibility issues and argue that her whole story sounds pretty unbelievable that this woman, Judith Kelling, would admit to making up a rape allegation perjury effectively, and to railroading David Wood, Alt to Ramona teenager she'd just met on a public street And then there's George Hall The man who held his tongue for thirty plus years before claiming that two jail house informants fabricated testimony to implicate David Wood in the desert murders the prosecution doesn't directly challenge Hall's claims Instead, they use them to criticize Greg. As in, you had more than fifteen years to find this guy. Why is he only showing up now diligence, they write requires more than waiting for witnesses to come forward And this brings us to the through line of the prosecution's arguments which is a familiar one, but worded pretty sharply here The Greg's latest petition is really just one more effort to manipulate the court The prosecution spends several pages outlining the many, many motions Greg has filed in the last fifteen years that have ultimately been denied by the courts. Being, that Greg has had so much time to look for evidence of his client's innocence And now, here he is with more half baked theories and conveniently urgent evidence But if this was your first look at the case, maybe you wouldn't see it. But all you have to do is look at the record to know what's going on here. The state says, quote With his second execution date rapidly approaching, Wood has ramped up his efforts to improperly delay justice. And his whole attempt is, quote, scatter shot at best and does nothing to erode the evidence that the jury used to convict him It was a little over fifty hours to go until the execution Greg decides to hand off the litigation for the moment to the team in Dallas He wants to go visit David to update them on everything that's happened this morning but also to spend what could be some of their last few hours together I joined him in the car on the way to Death row Greg is wearing his lucky tie, a pale blue number with circles on it It's lucky because he won at the Supreme Court once while wearing it Greg is feeling a little cautious about what exactly he should tell David, given the mixed signal they just got from the fififth Circuit. Well, I want to be careful because nothing's changed in terms of his situation, which is there's still an execution in in forty eight hours I don't want to say we're going to get to stay, stand down. So Prepare yourself stillill, here's some encouraging news, which might be almost like worse I give you some hope here. Without the ultimate, which is a stay of execution that's going to hold up. Yeah. It's like you're a doctor delivering A. like encouraging news, but Yeahah, we don't have the final test resultsactly waiting on the labs We park in the lot, and Greg climbs out, leaves his phone in the rental car. He's not allowed to bring it into the prison with him Meanwhile, back in Dallas, David Wood's pathway to estate gets a little more narrow The Board of Pardons and Paroles has sent word that they voted unanimously against giving David Wood a reprieve or commutation They're the ones who can give a recommendation to the governor. So it looks like that's the end of Avenue one that's not really a big surprise to the lawyers So They have a tangle decision from the fififth Circuit, which they're trying to deal with They've got their chances with the Supreme Court too But really, the big thing they're waiting on is word from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the CCA I don't know what was expecting when the CCA ruled a gas coming from one of the offices, the ring of a special alarm or something. Instead, when the CCA ruling finally came down, we got Jeremy saddling up to us uncharacteristically quiet grin on his face A CCA status execution Yeah So I just checked the docket. The CCA docket shows a stay pending further order of the court in a six two vote, which will be a final stay. So I should have I could sense you had a shit eating grin on as you were walking over here I must definitely did. I must definitely did This was the moment all the lawyers had been working toward for the entire time Mason and I have been following them. And they're so little stunned that it's happened. Jeremy is giddy, really amazed by this day and really proud of himself for the anticlimactic way he delivered it to all of us It is not the only thing that feels casual in proportion to the weight everyone has put on it. In their ruling, the CCA judges don't offer any explanation for their decision to stop the execution. The order itself is barely three pages long. basasically just a summary of the case history and a list of the defense team's claims ' going to stay and write quotes, This stay will remain in place until further order of this court. Jeremy sends a quick text to Greg. Just one word, stay Greg gives him a call back. Hey, Greg, Jeremy, I just got out. What's the scoop I'm with Greg outside of Death Row when he gets the news He'd just come out of the prison where he was visiting David. Well, get your ass back inside. All right, I'm gonna do that. I just want to see what you got there. Stay pending further order from the CCA. so it's six two. It doesn't matter. Yeah finals. sixix two. Yeah, hurry up and get back. All right, I'm gonna get back in. Wow, fantastic news Fantastic. Congratulations. All right, I'm going back in. Yeah. Okay, bye Greg bends out of the car He wants to be the one to tell David the news himself. He doesn't trust the prison staff will relay it And so David might spend the entire night continuing to think he's about to be executed It's near closing time at the prison And so Greg literally has to run to make it through security before they close up shop for the day About ten minutes later, Greg comes rushing out and gets in the car clearly out of breath as we peel out of the parking lot. Holy mackerel my dad would say, I just can't believe it. He gets out his phone and calls Jeremy again God David was overjoyed, tears in his eyes. His sisters were there. They were crying I even got a little teary eyed myself, Jeremy. But anyway, yeah, they were just so elated And I only stayed for, you know, a minute to tell them. And he said, getet some sleep, get some rest, tellell everybody I love them. I said, I'll be back tomorrow. I said, I haven't read the order. I know it's six to two. I know it's going to stick So Naomi and Claire are there, right in Dallas? Yes. Nes' not. All right, wonderful Well, u Bour yourself with a hard one, stiff one, whatever it's called. Greg himself plans on pizza, and of course, some ben and Jerry's We head to Walmart and he browses the freezer aisle carefully. as if he's looking for just the right vintage of wine for the occasion He settles on chocolate fudge brownie and puts it down in one sitting. Meanwhile, in El Paso Marsha Fulton had been waiting. Mha's daughter, Deser was one of the desesert killer's victims just fifteen years old when she was murdered Next year will be the forty year anniversary of our death. Marsha had spent most of those years anxious to see David wouldood pay for it She'd packed her bag and was ready to leave for Huntsville for the execution when she got the call about the stay. Marsha then calls me actually and asks if I've heard the news yet Yeah, it's like Why are they playing this game? Why are the victims the ones keep getting victimized Yeah There's some real emotional whiplash here, going from the defense team's celebration to Marsha's fury This is the second time she's prepared for this moment to finally keep her promise to her daughter, only for something to get in the way You know, I mean, thirty seven years this could have been done I mean, there's no new evidence And it's just that he said, Well, I'm not guilty. Well, I would say that too if I was facing the death penalty Anyway, I just wanted to let you know if you haven't heard. Yeah get done one way or the other. I swear God, I gott to go down here and do it myself I'll talk soon. Do that? No, I'll do that, but S that or God can do it for me. One of the two Four and a half months go by before we hear anything else about David Wood's case from the CCA But the judges had been silent about what exactly the next steps were here, and which of the lawyers' claims they actually found persuasive In july twenty twenty five, the defense team finally gets answer. The judge is right that all of their claims should be evaluated by a lower court which means a hearing in front of a judge in El Paso It turns out the defense team was right to feel some optimism around the new mysterious CCA judges One of them goes even further than the rest of the court and writes, quote This case should have been resolved one way or the other long ago and likely would have had a DNA test been ordered. He's just one of nine judges, so he can't force the issue on his own But it does pave the way for an El Paso judge to order the testing that Greg has wanted for more than a decade now This ruling is about as good as it gets for the defense team. And the day it comes out Alvin and I hop on the phone with Greg and Jeremy to talk about it. For a case that had such long odds when we started following these lawyers around, I was fully prepared for a bit of gloating here But I wasn't exactly hearing them take a victory lap Greg had spent all of those weeks we were with him, cultivating Charlie Brown optimism But now that he'd won, it felt like he was finally getting his bearings And while I could hear gratitude in his voice for the outcome, I could also hear some real anger about how close it all came to going the other way. And you know, if David had been executed on march thirteenth I think the state of Texas and the judges and the state and federal courts would have said you know, well done. he got the representation uh that he needed and deserved and we can all, you know be satisfied that We upheld the principles of our cononstitution and our legal system The system worked Of course that's probably what they'd say now too, right? The system worked, Hey, this we're going to give this guy a shot who might be innocent Greg, it's probably clear, does not think the system worked. O rather, he doesn't think the Cital S system works. And he hates that perhaps all the time and the skill and dedication that he's given to David Wood's case might be used as an example of a system operating as it should The idea that all the lawyers in this case are zealously representing their sides and that the judges are giving deliberate consideration to all the arguments, calling balls and strikes That this process, though imperfect, is nevertheless the best that humans can do Greg sees it all as much more precarious than that Jeremy, as usual, puts it more bluntly Yeah, I mean, just fucking crazy, right? I mean, Greg has like a nice like answer that I totally agree with too. but like You know, if Greg doesn't get involved in David's case, you know, fifteen, twenty years ago, whatever it was, he would been executed a long time ago And none of these claims would have ever seen the light of day Back in nineteen seventy two, the Supreme Court struck down the death penalty halting executions across the country Some of the justices wrote about racism, but actually their biggest focus was arbitrariness that a bunch of people committed horrible crimes every year and who actually got the death penalty was incredibly random So the death penalty disappeared for a few years. And then politicians wrote new laws to try to make it less random. And the Supreme Court allowed executions to start up again We're about to hit the fifty year anniversary of the supposedly new and improved death penalty A half century with almost seventeen hundred executions Watching David Wood's defense lawyers over the last twelve weeks, I feel confident in saying It's still arbitrary. Not just in who gets put to death, but in who gets a stay For instance, it was arbitrary that David Wood got a lawyer as devoted as Greg and that he could enlist a team as devoted as Jeremy's arbitrary that George Hall was still alive and off parole, and willing to tell his story about the jailhouse informants that remoted his Mukes just happened to be back in El Paso and willing to tell her story at a waterburger that some judges believe these stories enough to stop the execution felt arbitrary But if they hadn't bought it, David Wood would be dead right now. And that would feel arbitrary too We began following these lawyers thinking we'd get to watch their tactics wondering if they were selling a story or raising legitimate doubts about an unjust conviction And in the end, I think both might be true, and neither is really the point. The point is that somehow, we've arrived at a place where two separate courts One federal and one state have both found serious problems in this case And this is after thirty plus years and layers and layers of appeals. afterfter this case crossed the desks of dozens of judges. So why now Well the obvious answer is that the specter of an execution sparked a certain urgency to re examamine every little aspect of the case But there's a trade off too Relying on a deadline is irreversible as an execution is a cruel kind of brinksmanship. pututting someone's life in the middle of an exhausting game of chicken The effect goes beyond the person on death row. You can hear it in the tired voices of attorneys and in the jaded sighes of a victim's mother too And besides, the last twelve weeks haven't gotten us any closer to knowing what really happened in a stretch of desert in northeast El Paso in nineteen eighty seven It's been more than a year since the Stay of execution was issued David Wood's prospects have never been better But it's almost impossible to know whether he'll ever be declared innocent much less walk out of prison There's still no date set for a hearing on David Wood's innocence claim. For all of the blame Greg has taken for delaying this case, now other parties, the various judges and prosecutors involved, are contributing to the delays too And ironically, from Greg's perspective The faster things can happen now, the better After all, David Wood is almost seventy years old Recently, a judge in El Paso ruled that the defense team could take depositions interview some people who might not have been willing to talk to them before. The judge said he's anxious to get hearings going in the fall, so he set a deadline to complete those depositions As of this writing, the defense team has a little less than twelve weeks