El Paso serial killer loses mental disability claim again, Texas court ruling
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David Leonard Wood/AP Photo |
EL
PASO, TEXAS – The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected convicted serial
killer David Leonard Wood’s request to continue with his mental disability
appeal, court documents show.
The
Dec. 12 ruling means Wood lost another attempt to avoid the death penalty on the
basis of alleged mental disability, this time by arguing that past measures
used to determine his level of mental disability did not take into account more
modern diagnostic standards.
“The Court rejects
Applicant’s intellectual disability claim by applying current diagnostic
standards,” according to the majority’s written opinion of the 6-2 ruling.
“Applicant is not intellectually disabled. He is a serial killer.”
A
dissenting justice stated in a minority written opinion that Wood should be
allowed to prove he is intellectually disabled according to “the current
medical diagnostic framework,” as set out by a more recent U.S. Supreme Court
decision involving another death penalty case.
The 61-year-old Wood
was sentenced to death by lethal injection in 1992 for the deaths of six girls
and young women whose bodies were found in shallow graves in 1987 in Northeast
El Paso.
The
victims were Desiree Wheatley, Karen Baker, Angelica Frausto, Rosa Maria Casio,
Ivy Susanna Williams and Dawn Smith.
Wood
denied killing anyone.
Gregory
Wiercioch, a lawyer who represented Wood in the post-conviction appeal, could
not be reached for comment immediately.
“Wood
didn’t have a mental disability then and he doesn’t have one now,” said John Guerrero,
a former El Paso Police Department detective who was in charge of the task force
that investigated the 1987 disappearances and murders that terrorized the community.
“He
is a serial rapist who vowed that he would never go back to prison,” Guerrero
said. “Desiree Wheatley and the rest of those young girls never got the chance to
live a full life. Wood has lived much longer than they did.”
Earlier
this year, Guerrero and Marcia Fulton, mother of Desiree Wheatley, were
featured in Investigation Discovery’s “On the Case with Paula Zahn.” The episode
about the 1987 murders which focused on Wheatley’s case was titled “Buried Dreams.”
Link to trailer of the Paula Zahn program
“I
can’t think of why this is appeal after appeal,” Fulton said. “All I can do is
wait and see and pray for justice.”
The
Texas Attorney General’s Office, which represented the state in the appellate
proceedings, provided the following statement: “We cannot comment on pending
litigation or announce plans for future litigation.”
The
Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted Wood a stay of execution in 2009,
agreeing to allow him time to prepare his mental disability claim. He could be
exempted from the death penalty if he proved that he is mentally disabled.
In
2014, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied Wood’s claim of mental
disability.
Wood’s
appeals lawyers filed new motions, challenging the basis
on which the court’s 2014 mental disability decision was reached, and requested new DNA
tests for evidence collected during the police investigation that led to Wood’s
conviction.
Authorities have not reported the results of any DNA tests or if such tests were carried out successfully.
The
U.S. Supreme Court had ruled in 2002 that it was cruel and unjust punishment to
sentence to death someone who is mentally disabled.
During Wood's most recent post-conviction proceedings, some of which took place in El Paso's 171st District Court before a visiting judge, witnesses and reports gave different IQ’s
for Wood, ranging from 64 to 111.
Witnesses also testified that Wood exhibited good
adaptive social skills and was able to hold down jobs, including as an inmate. While
in prison, witnesses testified, Wood read books and corresponded with relatives
and pen pals.
In countering his mental disability claim, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals indicated in its Dec. 12 ruling that Wood
committed the six murders in a methodical manner, and that a survivor’s testimony placed
him in the same desert area where the six victims’ bodies were found in 1987.
Guerrero said Wood was also a police suspect in the 1987 disappearances of Marjorie Knox, a Chaparral, N.M. resident, and of El Pasoans Melissa Alaniz and Cheryl Vasquez; none of them were found or heard from again. Wood denied any connection to their disappearances.
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