The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has imposed an indefinite stay on the execution of David Leonard Wood, the man convicted of the 1987 murders of six young women in El Paso, just two days before his scheduled death by lethal injection. Wood, now 67, has spent nearly four decades on death row, maintaining his innocence in what the media branded as the crimes of the "Desert Killer." According to a recent USA TODAY report, the Texas court's decision arrived with no specific details about the grounds for the granted stay.
As reported by CBS Austin, Wood was accused of the murders of Dawn Smith, Angelica Frausto, Rosa Maria Casio, Ivy Williams, Karen Baker, and Desiree Wheatley, whose ages ranged from 14 to 24 when they were found buried in a desert northwest of El Paso. Claims of destroyed evidence and false testimony have clouded Wood's conviction, leading to several appeals over the years, culminating in this latest development.
In an hourlong interview with USA TODAY, Wood denounced the allegations against him, questioning the integrity of the system that convicted him based on circumstantial evidence. He said, "I’m accused of killing six people when an entire police force couldn’t find a single shred of evidence of anything. How can you let people just dump cases on you and not be angry?" Wood's attorney emphasized the striking lack of DNA evidence linking his client to the crimes and criticized the state's failure to conduct comprehensive testing on the collected items.
While his conviction stands on testimonies from jailhouse informants and a sex worker who accused Wood of attempted rape, his legal team presented counter-arguments about the credibility of these witnesses. Wood told USA TODAY, "I’ve never confessed anything to anybody about anything," raising questions about the veracity of the informants' statements and their motives. The stay comes as Texas courts have now blocked executions for the second time, in under six months, including overturning the conviction of another death row inmate, Brittany Marlowe Holberg.
The reverberations of Wood's case resonate with the victims' families, who continue to grapple with the prospect of justice. Jolieen Denise Gonzalez, sister to victim Angelica Frausto, told USA TODAY that the stay was "fair," expressing skepticism over Wood's direct involvement in her sister's murder. On the other hand, Marcia Fulton, the mother of Desiree Wheatley, expressed her broken heart at the delay in seeing justice fulfilled for her daughter. "I’m waiting for justice for my daughter because I promised her that at her gravesite. Each time this happens, it breaks my heart again, that I can't follow through," Fulton said.
