Steven Michael Woods junior

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Steven Michael Woods, Jr. (Born April 17, 1980 in Livonia , Michigan ; † September 13, 2011 in Huntsville , Texas ) was a US citizen who was sentenced to death for double homicide in 2002 and executed in Texas in 2011 .

Life

Woods grew up in a broken family, his father was addicted to alcohol and drugs. A good student at first, he began using marijuana at the age of 13 and dropped out of school at the age of 16. He had no permanent residence and was a drug dealer.

On May 2, 2001, he was at the scene with his friend Marcus Rhodes when 21-year-old Ron Whitehead and 19-year-old Bethena Brosz were murdered in a suburb of Dallas . Both victims had multiple gunshot wounds and their throats were cut. There were no eyewitnesses to the fact. After there was evidence that Rhodes and Woods were with the victims the night before the murder, the two were interrogated. A search found two firearms used in the crime in the home of Rhodes' parents and several items belonging to the victims' possession in Rhodes' car. Woods, who initially remained at large after his first interrogation, fled to California and was arrested two months later. He claimed he was innocent and testified that he only witnessed a crime that Rhodes committed. He described witness statements that he had bragged about the crime as lies. For, although there was no evidence that Woods was the gunman, he was in April 2002 by a grand jury in Denton County accused of double murder and found in August 2002 after a trial and sentenced to death. The so-called Law of Parties was applied, according to which accomplices can be held responsible for a crime, even if they are not the direct perpetrator. At the trial of the sentence, prosecutors argued that Woods may have been involved in another murder as well, for which he was never tried. Rhodes, whose fingerprints were on both weapons, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life imprisonment. The death sentence against Woods was upheld by all instances.

In November 2006, Woods went on a hunger strike by several inmates protesting the poor conditions on death row. Because of the considerable doubts about his guilt, Amnesty International and Noam Chomsky , among others, campaigned publicly for him. On September 2, 2011, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied his final motion to stay the execution. As usual, Governor Rick Perry did not exercise his right to pardon. Wood died from a lethal injection at 6:22 p.m. local time in Huntsville State Prison on September 13, 2011 . To the end he protested his innocence.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ex-drug dealer executed for killing 2 in Texas ( Memento December 27, 2011 in the Internet Archive ), Wall Street Journal, September 13, 2011
  2. ↑ Texas Penal Code - Section 7.02. Criminal Responsibility For Conduct Of Another ( Memento from January 25, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ Woods v. State, 152 SW3d 105 (Tex.Crim.App. 2004), Ex parte Woods, 176 SW3d 224 (Tex.Crim.App. 2005), Woods v. Thaler, 399 Fed.Appx. 884 (5th Cir. 2010)
  4. ↑ Ralph Blumenthal: Texas Inmates Protest Conditions With Hunger Strikes , The New York Times, November 8, 2006
  5. ↑ Urgent action 269/2011 of September 10, 2011
  6. ↑ Mark Pitzke: Governor Perry on a death penalty mission , Spiegel Online, September 9, 2011
personal data
SURNAME Woods, Steven Michael junior
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American criminal
DATE OF BIRTH April 17, 1980
PLACE OF BIRTH Livonia (Michigan)
DATE OF DEATH September 13, 2011
Place of death Huntsville, Texas