Courts Block Executions in Texas and Louisiana

On Tuesday the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals voted 6-2, with one abstaining, to stay the execution of, David Leonard Wood, “the Desert Killer.” On the same day a federal district judge in Louisiana stayed the nitrogen gas execution of a rapist/murderer, Jessie Hoffman, Jr. Alexis Simmerman, Amanda Lee Meyers and Aaron Martinez of the Austin American Statesman report that the Texas court did not state the reasons for staying David Leonard Wood’s execution in its per-curiam opinion. The same court blocked Wood’s execution in 2009 based on his lawyers claim that he was too mentally retarded to qualify for it.  Wood, an habitual sex offender, was convicted in 1987 of the kidnapping, rape and murders of six young women and girls, whose bodies were found in shallow graves in the desert near El Paso. Jurors heard testimony from two cellmates that Woods told about the killings.  A sex  worker also testified that Wood raped her in the same desert area, where the bodies were found, but she escaped when a noise startled him while digging her grave. Wood was convicted of that rape. His attorneys for the murder charges argued that all three were lying.

Additional testimony came from a young woman who said that she was 13 when Wood raped her under an El Paso bridge.  Another woman testified that when she was 12, Wood lured her to help him look for a lost dog before raping her at a construction site. Other witnesses said they had seen Wood with some of the victims before they were raped and murdered. Perhaps they were lying as well. DNA testing was not available the U.S. in 1987, but testing of samples taken from the victims 23 years later in 2010 proved inconclusive. This is not unusual as forensics experts and detectives did not know how to collect and preserve samples from crime scenes for DNA testing until the 1990s.

NBC News reports on the case of Louisiana murderer, Jessie Hoffman, Jr., who was convicted of the November 1996 kidnap, rape and murder of 28-year-old Mary Elliot. Facts presented in a 2021 Louisiana Supreme Court decision indicate that on November 27, 1996, the day before Thanksgiving, Ms Elliot left work and was retrieving her car from a downtown New Orleans parking lot when Hoffman kidnapped her at gun point. He forced her to drive to an ATM and withdraw $200 and then drove her to a boat launch at a river outside of town. He then stripped her, raped her and then forced her to walk naked down a path before shooting her in the back of the head, execution style. Hoffman’s attorneys argued that while their client admitted to the kidnap and rape, the murder was accidental, occurring when Ms. Elliot wrestled with him for the gun. The jury was not buying, and convicted Hoffman on all charges and sentenced him to death. Hoffman was scheduled to die by nitrogen gas on March 18, when Obama appointee District Judge Shelly Dick ruled that his execution be stayed until the use the “newly proposed of method of execution” be fully reviewed. The state Attorney General has promised to immediately appeal that ruling. Over the past year Alabama has executed four condemned murderers via nitrogen gas, and in each case the legal challenges by inmates claiming cruel and unusual punishment were rejected.

Death penalty opponents, progressive academics and jurists are responding to the fear that executions will increase as nitrogen gas replaces lethal injection drugs, which opponents have been able to block states from acquiring. Nitrogen gas can be purchased at Home Depot, it makes up 70% of the air we breath and puts murderers to sleep in a few minutes.