Texas accomplice law led to execution sentence set for today

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Accomplice law led to execution set for today

Opponents say 'law of parties' is archaic and unjust

By ALLAN TURNER and ROSANNA RUIZ

2008 Houston Chronicle

HUNTSVILLE — A federal judge today granted a request to delay the execution of condemned inmate Jeffery Wood, who was set for execution this evening for taking part in the robbery and murder of a convenience store clerk in the Texas Hill Country.

The judge granted a request by Wood's attorneys to delay his execution so they could hire a mental health expert to pursue their arguments that he is incompetent to be executed.

Wood would have been the ninth condemned prisoner put to death this year and the fifth this month in the nation's busiest capital punishment state.

The 1996 robbery of Kerrville's Goldstar Texaco was far more than a nickel-and-dime job.

Inside the convenience store safe lay $11,000 in cash and checks. But when David Reneau, a stocky, 20-year-old nurse's aide, pulled a pistol and announced the stickup, everything went wrong.

As Reneau's partner, Jeffery Wood, waited in the getaway car, the bandit fatally shot store clerk Kriss Keeran in the face.

Six years later, Reneau was executed for the murder. Today, unless courts or Gov. Rick Perry intervene, Wood also will be put to death.

Wood's case was a rare death sentence under Texas' law of parties, which holds accomplices in murders just as culpable as the person who pulled the trigger or wielded the knife. The case has prompted protests by those who contend that the law and the punishment are archaic.

"Put them together," said David Fathi, U.S. program director for Human Rights Watch, "and you have a situation that the rest of the world views with shock and incomprehension."

If Wood is executed, he would be at least the fourth murder accomplice — as opposed to actual killer — put to death through Texas' law of parties in recent years. The law has been part of the state penal code since at least 1879.

"It's a pretty traditional criminal law that accomplices and co-conspirators are equally held culpable," said University of Houston law professor Sandra Thompson, a criminal law specialist. "You don't have to specifically agree to commit a killing. You agree to commit the target crime. Then any other crimes that are foreseeable, you're responsible."

Role of accomplice

Supporters of the law, she said, suggest that the mere presence of an accomplice can embolden a criminal to kill. Under this theory, a crime might not have been committed without the presence of an accomplice to support the act.

University of Texas law professor Jordan Steiker, however, argued that the law's application to Wood "flies in the face of a broader effort to reserve the death penalty for extreme cases."

Fathi said prosecutors in Reneau's case mocked defense attorneys when they tried to deflect responsibility onto Wood.

"They argued clearly and unambiguously that Reneau was the bad actor," he said. "Then, after getting the death sentence, at Wood's trial they essentially conflated the two men. They argued that they were in this together."

Kerr County District Attorney Bruce Curry, whose office prosecuted the case, did not return telephone calls.

The law of parties, derived from English common law, is on the books in 24 of 36 American death penalty states, but internationally, Fathi said, it is increasingly rare. England abolished it 51 years ago.

The U.S. Supreme Court, ruling in law of parties cases from Florida and Arizona, has sent mixed signals.

In 1982, the court reversed the death sentence for Earl Enmund, the getaway driver in a Florida robbery turned deadly. It noted that Enmund did not kill, attempt to kill or intend to kill or to facilitate a murder.

Five years later, the court held two Arizona brothers culpable in a quadruple homicide committed by their father and another man whom the brothers had armed and helped escape from prison. The brothers, the justices held, "could have anticipated the use of lethal force."

Neither the Texas Attorney General's Office nor the Harris County District Attorney's Office could say how many capital law of parties cases originated in Harris County, which leads the state in sending killers to death row.

Among those, however, was the case of Carlos Santana and James Meanes, who killed security guard Oliver Flores in an unsuccessful $1.1 million Houston armored car robbery in 1981. Santana was executed in 1993; Meanes, convicted as the triggerman, in 1998.

Montgomery County case

In a Montgomery County case, Joseph Starvaggi and G.W. Green were executed and Glenn Martin was sentenced to life in prison, after they were convicted of the 1975 shooting of Magnolia resident John Denson while burglarizing his home. Starvaggi was convicted as the shooter.

Gaining greater public attention were the law of parties-related cases of Joseph Nichols of Houston and Kenneth Foster of San Antonio.

Nichols was executed in 2007 for the 1980 murder of convenience store clerk Claude Shaffer. Nichols' partner, Willie Williams, identified as the triggerman, was executed in 1995.

At Nichols' first trial, prosecutors tried him under the law of parties. He was convicted, but the jury split in assessing punishment, so Nichols was retried.

In the second trial, prosecutors largely abandoned the law of parties strategy. "They put on that he was the triggerman," said his attorney, J. Clifford Gunter III. "That's what makes Nichols a little unique."

Foster was sentenced to die after being convicted under the law of parties in a San Antonio robbery-murder. His attorneys argued that he had only been the getaway driver, and had not anticipated the killing.

Perry commuted Foster's sentence to life, although he said he intervened only because Foster and a co-defendant had been convicted in a single trial. Foster's partner, Mauriceo Brown, was executed in 2006.

Against commutation

In Wood's case, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles unanimously has voted to recommend the condemned man's sentence not be commuted. Perry, however, can still act on his own.

Wood and Reneau were roommates and knew their victim. For two weeks they planned the crime, even talking with Keeran and another store employee about staging a fake robbery. That plan fell through, prompting Wood and Reneau to undertake an actual stickup. They hauled off a safe and a cash drawer.

Wood initially was found incompetent to stand trial. After a period of treatment for mental illness, he was found competent, tried and convicted.

During the punishment phase, he banned his attorneys from introducing character witnesses on his behalf or cross-examining prosecution witnesses. He has not challenged the law of parties in his federal appeals.

PRISON PRECEDENTS

At least three Texas death row inmates have been executed under the law of parties, which makes accomplices as liable as the actual killer in capital murder cases.

• Carlos Santana, 40, executed in 1993 for the death of 29-year-old security guard Oliver Flores during a failed $1.1 million armored car heist in Houston. His co-defendant, James Meanes, the triggerman, was executed in 1998.

• Joseph Starvaggi, 34, executed in 1987 for fatally shooting Montgomery County probation officer John Denson, 43, during a Magnolia home burglary. An accomplice, G.W. Green, 49, was executed in 1991; a third man, Glenn Martin, got life in prison.

• Doyle Skillern, 49, was executed in 1985 for the murder of Department of Public Safety narcotics officer Patrick Allen Randel. Skillern claimed an accomplice, Charles Victor Sanne, was the gunman. Sanne got a life sentence.

Source: Death Penalty Information Center and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Web site

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