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EL PASO, Texas - Convicted serial killer David Leonard Wood (pictured) filed a last-minute appeal arguing that he is mentally ill and should not be put to death August 20.
Less than two hours before the deadline for final appeals, lawyers for Wood on August 18 filed a motion for a stay of execution and a writ of habeas corpus.
Lawyers Matthew L. Byrne and Gregory E. Wiercioch argued that Wood should not be executed because he is mentally retarded. They asked for a hearing to present evidence that he is mentally impaired.
Tuesday's motion for the stay of execution included statements from his father, Leo Wood, his sisters Deborah Galvan and Denise Coreas, and his 1992 defense lawyer Dolph Quijano, along with copies of David Wood's school records.
"His obtained IQ scores place him at the high end of the range of mild mental retardation," said Dale T. Johnson, a professor of psychiatry at Texas Texas University Health Sciences Center-El Paso.
According to a 1980 evaluation, Wood had a verbal IQ of 67, a performance IQ of 64, and full-scale IQ of 64.
School records show that Wood received low grades, including F's and D's, and flunked several courses. He was in special education classes, and frequently got in trouble for misbehaving.
"When David was 12 or 13, he began seeing ... the same psychiatrist his mother was seeing," said Leo Wood, who previously testified that David Wood's mother was mentally ill and took prescription drugs while she was pregnant with him.
The appeal cited the 2002 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Atkins v. Virginia that sentencing mentally retarded people to death is unconstitutional because it is cruel and unusual punishment. "Judges have until the execution date to rule on the appeal," said Abel Acosta, spokesman for the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals in Austin.
Barring any last-minute stays, Wood's execution by lethal injection will go on as scheduled Thursday in Huntsville, Texas.
In 1992, a jury convicted Wood of murdering six young women in 1987 and burying their bodies in the Northeast El Paso desert. He was found guilty of killing Ivy Susanna Williams, Desiree Wheatley, Karen Baker, Angelica Frausto, Rosa Maria Casio and Dawn Marie Smith.
After the trial in Dallas, the court sentenced him to death.
Wood, now 52, has denied killing the women, and since his incarceration he has filed several unsuccessful appeals.
The Texas Attorney General's Office said in a statement posted on the Internet Aug. 13 that five of the victims were seen the day they disappeared getting into vehicles that matched the ones owned by Wood.
Beth Haller, Ph.D., is Co-Director of the Global Alliance for Disability in Media and Entertainment (www.gadim.org). A former print journalist, she is a member of the Advisory Board for the National Center on Disability and Journalism (https://ncdj.org/). Haller is Professor Emerita in the Department of Mass Communication at Towson University in Maryland, USA. Haller is co-editor of the 2020 "Routledge Companion to Disability and Media" (with Gerard Goggin of University of Sydney & Katie Ellis of Curtin University, Australia). She is author of "Representing Disability in an Ableist World: Essays on Mass Media" (Advocado Press, 2010) and the author/editor of Byline of Hope: Collected Newspaper and Magazine Writing of Helen Keller (Advocado Press, 2015). She has been researching disability representation in mass media for 30+ years. She is adjunct faculty in the Disability Studies programs at the City University of New York (CUNY) and the University of Texas-Arlington.
From The El Paso Times:
