Judge Delays Execution, Blasts ‘Insane System’ to Determine Sanity
A federal judge has delayed the execution of a Texas inmate and blasted the “insane” system to determine whether he is sane enough to be put to death.
Jeffery Lee Wood, who sometimes spells his name as Jeffrey, was less than six hours away from execution when U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia issued a stay, the Houston Chronicle reports. The judge appointed a psychiatrist to examine Wood and two lawyers to represent him.
Wood’s lawyers say he is delusional and thinks he is the victim of a Freemason conspiracy, the New York Times reports.
Wood was sentenced under a Texas law that authorizes the death penalty for accomplices to crimes that result in a murder. Wood was sitting in the getaway car when his accomplice shot and killed a gas station cashier.
Garcia said the state had argued Wood had to make a “substantial showing of incompetency” before a court could appoint a lawyer and psychiatrist to make his case.
“With all due respect,” the judge wrote, “a system which requires an insane person to first make a ‘substantial showing’ of his own lack of mental capacity without the assistance of counsel or a mental health expert, in order to obtain such assistance is, by definition, an insane system.”
