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Jun 16, 2008 3:32 pm US/Central
Inmate Facing Lethal Injection For Double Slaying
LIVINGSTON (AP) ―
Condemned inmate Charles Dean Hood doesn't dispute he drove from Texas to his native Indiana in a $70,000 car that belonged to the man he's convicted of killing.
But Hood, a former topless bar bouncer set to die Tuesday for fatally shooting Ronald Williamson and Tracie Lynn Wallace almost 19 years ago in Plano, insists he had Williamson's permission to use the Cadillac for the 800-mile trip.
Hood also insists he didn't kill the couple, and that his fingerprints throughout the Plano home where they were shot in 1989 can easily be explained because Hood was living there and doing odd jobs for Williamson.
"He took care of me for almost two months," Hood said from Texas' death row, where a Collin County jury sent him in 1990.
Wallace, 26, had danced at the bar where Williamson, 46, was a customer. Hood said he had also worked at the club.
Hood, 38, would be the second Texas inmate executed this year in Huntsville and the second in as many weeks. Executions around the country and in the nation's busiest capital punishment state -- where 26 executions occurred last year -- were on hold from September until mid-April. That's when the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for resumption of executions by rejecting an appeal from two Kentucky death row prisoners who argued lethal injection was unconstitutionally cruel.
Lawyers for Hood were in state courts trying to void his conviction and death sentence, accusing a prosecutor from his trial and the trial judge of having a years-long romantic relationship that included the time of Hood's trial. Such an undisclosed relationship would be improper and legally unethical.
Other appeals in federal courts questioned whether instructions given to jurors who decided he should be executed failed to take into consideration what his lawyers argued were physical and mental problems and an abusive childhood, and whether the state should have provided him a lawyer to prepare a clemency request.
Hood said he wasn't responsible for the murders.
"I did not kill those people," he told The Associated Press. "There was no evidence saying I killed those folks."
Hood's prints, however, were found on plastic bags taped to Wallace's body. Other evidence showed he used Williamson's credit card to order flowers for a woman in Indiana and that he told people at the flower shop he was Williamson, showing off a gold watch that belonged to the victim. He also had pawned a diamond ring belonging to Williamson and tried cashing checks from Williamson's business by forging the victim's signature on the checks.
A jury deliberated less than 2 1/2 hours before convicting him of capital murder.
When Williamson came home for lunch Nov. 1, 1989, he called Plano police to report a burglary. Four minutes later, an officer responding to the call got no answer at the door, looked in a window and spotted Williamson's body on the floor. Then Wallace's body, partially wrapped in plastic garbage bags, was found stuffed in a water heater closet.
"I forgive his soul but I'll never forgive what he did," said Julie Wallace, whose youngest sister, known as Sissy, was killed. "It's important for me to forgive to have peace. And that's the only reason."
She planned to travel from her home in Michigan to watch Hood die.
"It's a sad situation for all involved -- his family as well as ours," she said. "Sissy has been gone for almost 20 years now. She is no longer with us. Even though his life hasn't been the greatest, he's still able to breathe and feel and see the sunrise and sunset, all which my sister will never be able to do."
Prosecutors said Hood, a seventh-grade dropout who was 20 at the time, shot the couple and stole money, jewelry and Williamson's Cadillac, then drove to Vincennes, Ind., hoping to impress a woman he considered his girlfriend.
When he called the woman from the car, she called police. Officers were waiting for him when he showed up at the business where she worked.
"I had permission to drive all the vehicles he had," Hood said from prison.
During the punishment phase of the trial, prosecution witnesses told of Hood's previous instances of violence, including the rape of a 15-year-old girl, and that he had a juvenile and adult criminal record that included a two-year prison term in Indiana for passing bad checks.
"I've done a lot of stupid stuff in my life," Hood said. "But I have never killed nobody."
Hood came within two days of execution three years ago. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, however, gave him a reprieve so his claims of mental retardation could be examined.
He's among at least 13 Texas death row inmates with executions dates in the coming months. Four are set for July, beginning with Carlton Turner, scheduled for injection July 10 for killing his parents 10 years ago at their suburban Dallas home.
(© 2009 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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