Next Wednesday, Texas plans to execute a man with a history of serious psychological problems. The man was sentenced to death largely due to the testimony of a quack doctor. And there are serious doubts about whether this death sentence is constitutional even if he were not tried under such suspicious circumstances.
More than a third of America’s executions take place in Texas. Texas’ eagerness to execute people is well known and even celebrated by the state’s top elected officials. And yet the case of Jeffrey Lee Wood stands out as unusual even by Texas’ standards. It’s rare to see any capital case that raises so many doubts about why an individual was condemned to die.
No Defense
Wood was delusional.
Facing a possible death sentence for his limited involvement in a 1996 murder, Wood was unable to comprehend “the reality surrounding the issues specific to this case,” according to testimony from a neuropsychologist. He was even briefly committed to a mental hospital after a jury found him incompetent to stand trial.
Yet Wood only received 15 days of treatment before the trial resumed. After he was convicted, according to his current attorneys, Wood was “unable to reconcile his delusional thinking that it was impossible for him to be found guilty with the reality that a jury had just done so.” Eventually, he “directed his lawyers to do nothing, to cross-examine no witnesses, present no witnesses, and make no arguments” during the crucial phase of the trial which would determine whether Wood would be sentenced to die. As a result, his current attorneys say, “Wood’s appointed lawyers declined to cross-examine any witnesses or present any evidence on Wood’s behalf.”
The Quack
One witness his appointed lawyers did not cross-examine was Dr. James Grigson. A psychiatrist and frequent expert witness in death penalty cases, Grigson was one of the most reliable cogs in Texas’ machinery of death.
A 1981 profile of Grigson in Time magazine begins by noting that “he has a kindly face and lots of country-boy charm, but when Psychiatrist James Grigson, 48, shows up in a Texas courtroom, it is usually the kiss of death.” A similar 1981 profile in the Washington Post revealed that in each of at least 50 different cases where Grigson was summoned as an expert witness, he testified “in roughly the same language, describing the person as a sociopath or a ‘severe sociopath . . . [who] . . . will continue his previous behavior,’ and will ‘. . . commit other similar crimmal acts if given the opportunity to do so.’” A 1988 profile in the New York Times identified him by two common nicknames — “Dr. Death” and “Dr. Doom.”
In 1995, months before Wood was charged with murder, both the American Psychiatric Association and the Texas Society of Psychiatric Physicians (TSPP) expelled Grigson from their membership, citing the physician’s unethical practice of testifying that multiple capital defendants were “one hundred percent certain” to be dangerous in the future. In one case, Grigson labeled a defendant named Randall Dale Adams “at the very extreme, worse or severe end of the scale” and claimed that “there is nothing known in the world today that is going to change this man; we don’t have anything.”
After spending 12 years in prison, Mr. Adams was exonerated of all charges. He has never committed a known act of violence.
Grigson’s testimony matters, in no small part, because Texas law requires prosecutors to prove that “there is a probability that the defendant would commit criminal acts of violence that would constitute a continuing threat to society” before a defendant may be sentenced to die. Though Grigson never personally examined Wood, he still told the jury that Wood “will most certainly commit future acts of violence and does represent a threat to society.”
Wood’s attorneys have since obtained statements from three jurors upset that they were not informed that Grigson was expelled from the TSPP. One said this fact was “fatal to his testimony” and that he “no longer agree[s]” that Wood should be executed. Another said that Grigson’s expulsion “discredits him as an expert.”
So Wood was delusional. His delusions led him to tell his lawyers not to defend him against a death sentence. And the state built a crucial part of its case by relying on the testimony of a discredited physician who was expelled from his professional community.
Oh, and there’s one other thing. Jeffrey Lee Wood never killed anyone.
Not The Shooter
As Wood’s own attorneys admit, he was part of a half-baked plan to rob a convenience store with a drifter named Daniel Earl Reneau. Wood drove Reneau to the store. Reneau went inside, and Reneau shot and killed a store employee.
There’s nothing especially unusual about Wood being hit with a murder charge for Reneau’s actions. Many states have “felony murder” laws, which permit everyone engaged in the same felonious act to be charged with murder if just one of them kills someone. Texas law provides that someone who “solicits, encourages, directs, aids, or attempts to aid the other person to commit an offense” can also be charged with that offense.
Yet, while holding Wood to account for Reneau’s decision to shoot someone isn’t especially controversial, Texas’ decision to execute Wood is hard to square with the Constitution. As the Supreme Court explained in Roper v. Simmons, “capital punishment must be limited to those offenders who commit ‘a narrow category of the most serious crimes’ and whose extreme culpability makes them ‘the most deserving of execution.’” Moreover, in Enmund v. Florida, a case that is remarkably similar to Wood’s, the justices held that a state could not execute a getaway driver due to his relatively minor involvement in a robbery that turned into a murder.
“The focus” in a case such as this one, Justice Byron White wrote for the Court, “must be on [the driver’s] culpability, not on that of those who committed the robbery and shot the victims.” He added that “we insist on ‘individualized consideration as a constitutional requirement in imposing the death sentence.’”
Wood’s case, in other words, is an omnishambles of justice. He suffers from delusions, and that may have, itself, contributed to his involvement in criminal activity. Likely motivated by these delusions, Wood instructed his attorneys not to offer a defense against the state’s efforts to impose the death penalty. And the state relied on a well-known charlatan to secure a death sentence.
And even if all of these facts did not exist, sentencing Wood to die would still violate the Constitution.