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Jun 25, 2008 7:28 pm US/Central
Clock Ticking Again For Condemned Texas Prisoner
LIVINGSTON (AP) ―
The execution clock is ticking again for condemned inmate Charles Dean Hood, whose scheduled trip to the Texas death chamber last week was aborted by state prison officials who ran out of time because of lengthy court appeals.
State District Judge John Nelms in Collin County on Wednesday set Hood's new death date for Sept. 10.
Hood waited in a small holding cell just a few steps from the death chamber throughout the evening of June 17. His death warrant allowed the lethal injection to occur between 6 p.m. and midnight. Appeals remained unresolved until after 11 p.m., however, and as midnight neared Texas Department of Criminal Justice officials determined they didn't have enough time to follow their procedures to get the execution finished by midnight.
It's the sixth execution date for Hood, 38, a former topless-club bouncer who was 20 when he was arrested in Indiana for the fatal shootings of Tracie Lynn Wallace, 26, an ex-dancer at the club, and her boyfriend, Ronald Williamson, 46, at Williamson's home in Plano in 1989.
Hood, who has maintained his innocence, was driving Williamson's $70,000 Cadillac. Fingerprint evidence tied him to the murder scene. Hood contended his prints were at Williamson's home because he was living there.
During the punishment phase of his trial, prosecution witnesses told of Hood's 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.
Nelms' order Wednesday was issued despite a motion from Hood's lawyers asking the court to refrain from setting a new date until allegations Hood unfairly was tried can be more fully investigated.
Hood's attorneys contend his trial judge and one of the prosecutors in the case were involved in an improper and legally unethical romance at the time that tainted Hood's trial in 1990.
Retired Judge Verla Sue Holland and then-Collin County District Attorney Tom O'Connell have declined to address the allegations.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state's highest criminal court and where Holland was a judge in the mid-1990s, rejected Hood's efforts to appeal on the grounds of the alleged relationship, citing procedural reasons for the rejection but not addressing the merits of the accusations.
"It is now apparent that the principals involved in the conduct that forms the basis of ... Hood's claim of judicial bias will remain mute until Mr. Hood is executed," Hood's attorneys said in their latest motion to the trial court and the appeals court seeking to block the setting of the date.
Lawyers A. Richard Ellis and Gregory Wiercioch noted both Holland and O'Connell "have been remarkably silent" and neither has denied the allegations "that they were involved in an intimate relationship ... that they themselves took extraordinary measures to keep secret."
They also accused the pair of refusing to cooperate with Hood's investigation.
"This strategy of silence is understandable -- if ethically and morally indefensible," the prisoner's lawyers said.
Last week, in their successful appeals to get the execution back on track but before time ran out, Collin County prosecutors accused Hood's lawyers of delay tactics by bringing up accusations of the romantic relationship, allegations that had surfaced years before.
Although late and prolonged appeals in rare instances have saved inmates set to die because the execution warrant expired, the postponement of the execution by prison officials was unprecendented in the nation's busiest death penalty state, where 406 inmates have been executed since 1982, including 26 last year.
At least 15 inmates are scheduled to die in Texas in the coming months, including four in July and six in August. Hood now is among four with dates for September.
(© 2009 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
