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 TSADP 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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A column of mine appeared in yesterday's Daily Texan, and concerns death penalty abolition. Go check it out. The comments are amusing as well.

I was also quoted on KLBJ radio here in Austin:

A small number of death penalty opponents didn’t let the stay of execution given to Jeff Wood stop them from protesting at the State Capitol. Matt Tedrow says there are still many issues surrounding the Wood case that need settling. "We’re not done here. We’re going to have to be back here…I don’t know when…in order to hopefully get him off death row permanently," he said.

Wood was the driver in a fatal convenience store robbery. He was convicted of capital murder under the law of parties, which makes an accomplice just as liable for a capital crime as the trigger-man. His death penalty stay, however, is not related to the arguments over that law. A federal judge yesterday delayed the execution so Wood's attorneys can hire a mental health expert to pursue their arguments that he is not competent to be executed.

 All I got for now.

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A snippet from IPS that I've been meaning to post for the past couple days:

...a new report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) contends that the cost of having military personnel provide security services in Iraq might be little different from the prices charged by private security contactors.

The report said that 6-10 billion dollars has been spent on security contactors thus far in 2008 and estimated that about 25,000-30,000 employees of security firms were in Iraq as of early this year. It estimates that, if spending for contractors continues at about the current rate, 100 billion dollars will have been paid to military contractors for operations in Iraq.

The CBO report revealed that about 20 percent of funding for operations in Iraq has gone to contractors. Currently, it said, there are at least 190,000 contractors in Iraq and neighbouring countries -- a ratio of about one contractor per U.S. service member. It noted that the U.S. has relied more heavily on contractors in Iraq than in any other war for functions ranging from food service to guarding diplomats.

Updates here have been few and far between, for a couple reasons. First, I have been more concerned with developing The New Texas Radical as a print publication, which is takes a lot of time. I've aslo been posting to the TNTR website rather than this one, since it enjoys wider readership and is more important than this site.

Second, I've been increasingly involved with the effort to save Jeff Wood, who is set to be executed this Thursday under Texas' Law of Parties, even though there is a consensus that he is factually innocent of murder. For more information, please visit either the Save Jeff Wood website or The New Texas Radical, which both provide background on Jeff's case.

If you subscribe to this website using a syndication service through LJ, etc., check out the TNTR website for syndication options as well. If you'll read what I post here, you might as well read what I post there as well.

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From NYT via Common Dreams, here's a piece on the rarity of photographs of troop bodies and Pentagon efforts to muffle journalists. Interesting if you're into press-state relations.

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