The column below appeared in the August 22, 2008 edition of UT-Austin’s Daily Texan newspaper. I’d like to note two corrections: Wood was condemned to death in 1997, not 1996 (my fault); and in the print version, I’m listed as a board member of CEDP, which is false (not my fault). Hooman Hedayati recently asked me to join SADP as a board member.
Anti-death-penalty activists and the friends, family and supporters of Jeff Wood scored a tremendous victory yesterday when a federal judge granted him a stay of execution. Though Wood’s struggle against the state is far from over, gross injustice was not allowed to carry the day.
Wood was condemned to death in 1996 for the murder of Kris Keeran, even though there is a consensus that Wood did not murder, intend to murder or know that a murder was going to take place. He was sentenced to death under the Law of Parties, section 7.02 of the Texas Penal Code, which holds co-defendants criminally responsible for a crime if they act as conspirators. Put another way, the Law of Parties allows for guilt by association. In Wood’s case, he was forced to drive a getaway vehicle after Keeran’s actual killer, Daniel Reneau, shot Keeran during a convenience store robbery in 1996. Wood was not even in the building when the killing occurred. Bill Bunker, the store’s assistant manager who helped plot and even encouraged the robbery, was never charged with any crime. Reneau was executed in 2002.
Yesterday, Jeff’s family and friends, activists and supporters from around the world clogged Gov. Rick Perry’s inboxes and phone lines with demands that Wood be spared. Even Kris Keeran’s father asked that Wood’s sentence be commuted. Last summer, Perry set a precedent for Wood’s case when he commuted the sentence of Kenneth Foster, who received the death penalty under similar circumstances.
But even though Wood is safe (for now, at least), his example raises hard questions about the Law of Parties and about capital punishment itself. The statute is clearly being used in an unjust and abusive manner when bit players are forced to pay the ultimate price.
It is time to demand that our state’s legislators correct this monstrous injustice. The examples of Kenneth Foster and Jeff Wood are not flukes in an otherwise fair system. Foster and Wood represent the sad tale of most death row inmates: indigence and poverty, inadequate representation, withheld testimony, forced confessions and so on. Even if capital punishment were fair, its overall application reeks of bias and flaws – especially in Texas, which leads the nation in executions.
The death penalty is not a deterrent to violent crime, and study after study has shown that it actually costs taxpayers more money than life in prison without possibility of parole, after court fees and prison time are factored in.
Currently, an anti-death-penalty sentiment is gripping the nation, mainly due to the fact that more and more Americans realize that there are serious problems when it comes to meting out the ultimate punishment. However, the problem ultimately rests on the fact that states have been given the right to kill people, not in any particular flaws with the death penalty’s application.
The use of violence, force or coercion by the state demands a high burden of proof. In Wood’s case, it falls on the state to show that the death penalty can be justified only in terms of what is necessary to guarantee the population’s safety or survival. The right to kill people, in other words, is such a powerful concession to the state that it cannot be justified intrinsically. As it happens, there are viable alternatives to the death penalty that also prevent murderers from being released into the general population: namely, life in prison without parole. There is no reason to execute people in the name of protecting others.
It is time that we enter the 21st century – or even the 20th century – by abolishing capital punishment now and forever. We’ve successfully delayed the state-sponsored murder of Jeff Wood. But we still have a long way to go in this state, and our work is certainly cut out for us.
Visit savejeffwood.com for more information about Jeff Wood’s case.
Tedrow is a journalism graduate student and a member of Campaign to End the Death Penalty.
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