The highest court in Texas issued a stay of execution for David Leonard Wood, who has always denied being El Paso’s so-called Desert Killer and reiterated his innocence of six murders in a recent hourlong interview with USA TODAY.
Wood was set to die by lethal injection on Thursday, a little more than 48 hours after the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stopped it.
Within minutes of the Texas decision, though it’s unclear which ruling technically came first, a Louisiana judge temporarily blocked what was to be the state’s first execution by nitrogen gas, finding that the largely untested method could cause the inmate, Jessie Hoffman, “pain and terror.”
Hoffman was set to be executed on March 18 for the rape and murder of 28-year-old Molly Elliot in 1996 in a crime he has partially acknowledged committing.
Stays of execution are relatively rare, but two back-to-back even more so. So how did it happen that way Tuesday?
Are the Texas and Louisiana decisions connected?
Although the decisions in Texas and Louisiana came incredibly close together in the neighboring states, they are purely coincidental. The appeals that triggered each court decision were arguing completely separate points in completely separate cases.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals issued its stay “until further order of this court” without explanation. But the decision stemmed from court filings that argued the evidence against Wood was woefully inadequate and that very little DNA evidence in the case was tested. And the evidence that was tested was either inconclusive or ruled Wood out.
“This is a serial murder case, a case with six victims, and in a serial murder case, I would expect the government, the state, to have a mountain of evidence − direct evidence tying David Wood to these victims, and there’s not,” Wood’s attorney, Gregory Wiercioch, told USA TODAY last week. “It’s incomprehensible to me how little evidence there is.”
Meanwhile in Louisiana, Hoffman’s attorneys challenged the way the execution was to be carried out, saying the largely untested nitrogen gas method would violate his constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment.
The argument swayed Chief District Judge Shelly Dick, who ruled that the method could cause Hoffman “pain and terror.”
Only four inmates have been executed with nitrogen gas in U.S. history, all in Alabama since January 2024. All the inmates in that state chose nitrogen gas over lethal injection and the electric chair, while Louisiana made the decision to execute Hoffman using nitrogen gas after experiencing difficulties obtaining drugs for lethal injection and because the state “has no readily available electric chair,” Dick said in her ruling.
She cited accounts from all four of the Alabama executions that “describe suffering, including conscious terror for several minutes, shaking, gasping, and other evidence of distress.”
“The public has paramount interest in a legal process that enables thoughtful and well-informed deliberations, particularly when the ultimate fundamental right, the right to life, is placed in the government’s hands,” she said.
She said that Louisiana cannot execute Hoffman until a trial is held examining the merits of the case, and a final judgement is issued.
Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said she would appeal Dick’s ruling with the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The Texas Attorney General’s Office has not responded to USA TODAY’s requests for comment.
Executions in the US so far this year
The U.S. has executed six inmates this year, including the firing squad execution of Brad Keith Sigmon in South Carolina on Friday.
Hoffman’s execution in Louisiana was just one of five originally planned in the U.S. next week.
Arizona is set to execute Aaron Gunches by lethal injection on Monday. In back-to-back executions Thursday, Oklahoma plans to execute Wendell Grissom, and Florida plans to execute Edward Thomas James, both by lethal injection.
Louisiana also was set to execute Christopher Sepulvado by nitrogen gas on Monday, but the 81-year-old inmate died from what the state said was natural causes.