Accomplice law led to execution set for today
Opponents say 'law of parties' is archaic and unjust
By ALLAN TURNER and ROSANNA RUIZ Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
Aug. 20, 2008, 11:16PM

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."


Rest of article.

[You know, Osama Bin Laden is guilty of mass murder only as a party to the crime. Same for Hitler and Charles Manson. Can you think of any other criminals who Human Rights Watch would let off?]

It is amazing how law professors spout off such opinions about criminal law, and yet, most criminal law professors I have known have little to no actual trial experience in any criminal matters, much less murder cases.

But their comments are entirely consistent with their desire to abolish the death penalty, regardless of logic in criminal law.

And when I saw the headline in the Chronicle article this morning, as I was reading online news, I knew what the content and focus of the article would be.

My favorite part about the article is that they spend the entire time talking/exploring the problems with executing accomplices only to end with the note that the defendant isn't raising those challenges in his federal appeals. I guess he didn't think it was that controversial.

quote:

---

Those who can do, those who can't teach?

It is amazing how law professors spout off such opinions about criminal law, and yet, most criminal law professors I have known have little to no actual trial experience in any criminal matters, much less murder cases.

---

This is true, to an extent. David Dow was my CONTRACTS professor in law school. *ponder*

However, some of us are actively working to correct this problem.

By the way, I just switched texts in one class for that very reason - the author of the book I ditched is a political scientist with a major agenda, not anyone with experience in criminal justice.

quote:

---

Originally posted by JB:
Can you think of any other criminals who Human Rights Watch would let off?]

---

How about the situation where 4 gang members wearing distinctive clothing, all carrying deadly firearms, enter a room and murder several people. Forensics show that only three of the weapons were responsible for all of the deaths; the last gun was fired many times, but did not kill anybody. The four gang members all have violent pasts and similar backgrounds. All four are identified and brought to trial, but while the evidence is compelling as to who the four were, and that all four were firing guns, it is unclear who held which gun. Under those facts (and HRW's analysis) none of them should be eligible for the death penalty right?

Well, that's the sort of thing faced when Dallas prosecuted the Texas Seven (really, Six, as one of them committed suicide back in Colorado before capture). They all participated in an escape from prison and the execution of an officer who interrupted their robbery. Who knows which ones shot or ran over him? Should it really matter?

Shame, shame on seeking to undermine well-accepted criminal law concepts in the name of the abolition of something these people dislike.

This story also points out the bias of the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC). This article from the Washington Post includes this tidbit at the end:

"In July, Dale Leo Bishop was put to death in Mississippi for the 1998 kidnapping and beating of Marcus Gentry. Bishop held the 22-year-old victim while another man, Jessie Johnson, bludgeoned him with a carpenter's hammer.

Dieter said the Bishop case was not included on his organization's list of accomplice executions "because we made a decision that this wasn't the same kind of thing."

"He held the man while another man killed him," Dieter said.

Thus, we now have the answer for why the DPIC only lists 8 men being executed as "accomplices." They simply cherry-pick the least-egregious cases they can find, and if an accomplice is a bad mo-fo who clearly had it coming, then they don't count that guy.

Of course, an advocacy group twisting facts to suit their purposes would not be a big deal if it wasn't for the fact that the lazy MSM routinely cites the DPIC as a reliable source of information on the death penalty and does no independent fact-checking of its own.

Texas death row inmate Jeffery Wood won at least a temporary reprieve Thursday, just hours before he was to have been executed in Huntsville for his role in a deadly convenience store robbery in 1996 in the Hill Country.

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

quote:

---

Originally posted by JB:
Can you think of any other criminals who Human Rights Watch would let off [death row]?

---

That's a trick question. The only correct answer is "all of them."