Charles Hood - TX (New date given)

10th September 2008

7:00 PM EDT
Charles Hood is scheduled to be killed by the people of Texas in revenge for the murders of Ronald Williamson and Tracie Lynn Wallace.




Visit Charles Hood's TDCJ Information here...

TEXAS----impending execution

Texas death row inmate set to die for Plano murders after appeal denied

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied an appeal Monday afternoon from
death row inmate Charles Dean Hood, who said his sentence should be set
aside because there were rumors the judge in his case was romantically
involved with the district attorney.

Charles Dean Hood Judges denied the appeal on procedural grounds, not the
merit of the issue, without dissent, saying it was an abuse of the system
because it had not been raised earlier.

Mr. Hood, 38, who was convicted in the 1989 murders of Ronald Williamson
and Tracie Lynn Wallace in Plano, is scheduled for execution this evening.

"I'm flabbergasted," said David Dow, director of litigation for the Texas
Defender Service, which is helping with Mr. Hood's case.

"I'm never confident in these cases, but I was confident we were going to
get a stay based on this claim," he said. "It's the most appalling sort of
relationship between a judge and a prosecutor that's imaginable."

John Rolater, assistant district attorney for Collin County, declined to
comment because "it is a matter of pending litigation."

Mr. Hood's appeal alleged that Judge Sue Holland, then a district court
judge in Collin County, presided over Mr. Hood's trial while she was
involved in a long-term intimate relationship with then-district attorney
Tom O'Connell.

Mr. O'Connell was 1 of 2 prosecutors on the case.

Though rumors of the relationship had circulated for years, including in a
2005 article at Salon.com, the issue had not been raised in court by Mr.
Hood's defense team until late last week.

It was introduced at that time after a former assistant district attorney
filed an affidavit saying the relationship was "common knowledge." That
former prosecutor questioned whether the relationship violated judicial
ethics.

Judge Holland, who has retired, and Mr. O'Connell, who is now in private
practice, could not be reached for comment.

The Court of Criminal Appeals, where Judge Holland later served for
several years, ruled that Mr. Hood was not entitled to raise the claim
because it was "old news," Mr. Dow said.

"In one sense that's correct," he said. "It was old news in the sense that
obviously the people having the affair at the time knew they were having
it and there are other people, too. But we postponed raising this claim
until we had some credible third-party assertion rather than just rumor
and innuendo. ... I just think that's a very peculiar and really unsound
basis for denying this claim."

In addition to denying the appeal on the basis of no new evidence, the
court noted that the Defender Service was not listed as Mr. Hood's lead
attorney, so another motion raising the same issue was not acted upon.

Greg Wiercioch, a staff attorney with the Texas Defender Service, said he
planned to refile today and hoped the court would then address the merits
of the case.

If the court still refuses to take it up, Mr. Hood's attorneys hope Gov.
Rick Perry will step in by ordering a 30-day reprieve. If that effort
fails, attorneys hope to find an avenue into federal court.

Last fall, the Court of Criminal Appeals was criticized harshly nationwide
when Chief Justice Sharon Keller declined to keep the court open past 5
o'clock so attorneys having technological difficulties could file a
last-minute appeal.

The condemned man, Michael Richard, was executed even though the U.S.
Supreme Court had agreed earlier that day to hear a Kentucky case on
whether lethal injection was cruel and unusual punishment.

(source: Dallas Morning News)

It is being reported that Charles Hood has just recieved a Stay!!!

More news to come!!

Fingers crossed!!

http://www. dallasnews. com/sharedcontent/dws/news/city/collin/plano/stories/061808dntexexecution. 12444543. html

05:25 PM CDT on Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Associated Press

HUNTSVILLE, Texas - A Collin County state district judge has put off the scheduled execution of Charles Dean Hood for a double slaying in suburban Dallas almost 20 years ago.




Charles Dean Hood In an order signed just over an hour before Hood could have gone to the death chamber Tuesday night, state District Judge Curt Henderson withdrew the execution warrant after defense attorneys for the inmate had sought any correspondence in the Collin County district attorney's office that could be related to accusations of a long-standing romantic relationship between one of Hood's prosecutors and the judge who presided over his trial in 1990.



The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals had refused to consider arguments about the alleged affair, citing technical reasons that disqualified the appeal.



Charles Dean Hood, 38, was arrested in his native Indiana the day after the 1989 slayings of Ronald Williamson and Tracie Lynn Wallace at Williamson's home in the Dallas suburb of Plano.



Hood would have been the second Texas inmate executed in as many weeks as prosecutors in the nation's most active death penalty state worked to trim an execution backlog created after all capital punishments in the nation were stalled for some eight months by a U.S. Supreme Court review of the constitutionality of lethal injection procedures. At least 13 other inmates are scheduled to die in the coming months in Texas, where 26 were executed last year, more than any other state.



When arrested, the then 20-year-old Hood was driving Williamson's $70,000 Cadillac but insisted he had permission from the victim. Hood said he met Williamson at the club where Wallace danced, then was hired to do odd jobs and allowed to live at the computer software firm owner's home.



Hood maintained he was innocent of the murders of Williamson, 46, and Wallace, 26.



"I may not be the smartest person in the world, but I'm not what they say I am," he said from death row, where he was known to fellow inmates as "Hoodlum.

"

"It doesn't take a biochemist to figure out somebody else commited this crime," Hood said.



Lawyers argued in appeals that Hood didn't receive a fair trial. His trial judge and one of his prosecutors at the time of Hood's 1990 trial were engaged in an improper and legally unethical years-long romantic relationship they tried to keep hidden, attorneys contended in an appeal rejected by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.



An appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court contended jurors received improper instructions when they decided Hood should be put to death because they were unable to properly consider his poor childhood and physical and mental problems. Another appeal questioned whether Hood should have been entitled to a state-provided lawyer to prepare a clemency request.



Hood said his fingerprints were at Williamson's home because he was living there.



Evidence showed his prints were on plastic bags taped to Wallace's body, which had been stuffed into a water heater closet. His bloody prints were on a weight machine used to block the closet door.



Other evidence showed he used Williamson's credit card to order flowers for a woman in Vincennes, Ind., where he was arrested, that he had pawned a diamond ring belonging to Williamson and tried cashing checks from Williamson's business by forging the victim's signature on the checks.



Hood's prints also were on a note left for Williamson, presumably from Wallace, when he came home for lunch. But Williamson called police, worried that his girlfriend had been abducted, because Wallace's name was misspelled on the note. An officer responding to his call found the bodies. Both victims had been shot in the head.



"If you murder, you kill, you deserve the same thing," said Julie Wallace, whose sister was murdered. "For a long time I was very angry. All I know is that from the day my mother said my sister was dead, I said whoever did it will pay for it when they stand before God and our justice system. It may roll slow, but I think justice always is served.

"

She said her sister, known to her as Sissy, had told her Hood made her "very uncomfortable, that he did not want to improve his life and was just there to get what he could get.

"

"He was being asked to leave, and this is what happened," she said.



During the punishment phase of his trial, prosecution witnesses told of Hood's rape of a 15-year-old girl, that he had a juvenile and adult criminal record that included a two-year prison term in Indiana for passing bad checks. He violated his parole for that conviction by running off to Texas with an underage girl.



Hood came within two days of execution three years ago before winning a court reprieve. This was his fifth execution date.



Scheduled for execution next in Texas is Carlton Turner, set to die July 10 for murdering his parents 10 years ago at their suburban Dallas home.

More reports of the Execution being back on!!!



Cruel and Unusual...!!!

June 17, 2008, 5:48PM
Inmate's execution stopped; DA appeals


By MICHAEL GRACZYK Associated Press Writer
© 2008 The Associated Press

HUNTSVILLE, Texas — A former topless club bouncer condemned for a double slaying almost 20 years ago won a reprieve Tuesday just over an hour before he could have been put to death when a state district judge withdrew his execution warrant.



Charles Dean Hood cried Tuesday when informed he could live.



"I just thank God," he said. "I just walk by my faith. If it didn't happen, I was going home to the Lord.

"

But state prison officials declined to immediately move Hood back to death row because they were told the Collin County district attorney's office was appealing the ruling from State District Judge Curt Henderson to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. The judge, based in Collin County, north of Dallas, did not give a reason for lifting the death warrant, which was set to expire at midnight.



Attorneys for the inmate earlier had lost appeals in the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals that were based on reports of an affair between now retired Judge Verla Sue Holland and then-Collin County District Attorney Tom O'Connell. The reported affair was continuing during the time of Hood's 1990 trial, they said.



Lawyers from the Texas Defender Service, trying to keep Hood alive, then filed a motion in Henderson's court about two hours before Hood could have been executed seeking all correspondence from the prosecutor's office that may be related to the alleged affair.



The accusations of the relationship, which the retired judge and former prosecutor have declined to address, were among several last-day appeals defense attorneys lost in the courts.



http://www. chron. com/disp/story. mpl/ap/tx/5842869. html

Court sets 6th execution date for death row inmate


After a lengthy appeals process indirectly prevented the execution of Charles Dean Hood last week, the 296th District Court in Collin County has issued Hood his 6th execution date.

The order, which set 38-year-old Hood’s execution date for Sept. 10, was signed yesterday by presiding Judge John Nelms.

Hood’s execution, originally scheduled for June 17, was postponed after the Supreme Court rejected three appeals shortly after 11 p.m. that night.

With midnight approaching, Texas Department of Criminal Justice administrators were weary of fitting the full lethal injection protocol into the remaining time window, and decided instead to allow Hood’s death warrant to lapse.

"There were appeals filed throughout the evening, and ultimately, the Supreme Court rejected 3 appeals shortly after 11 p.m.," said Michelle Lyons, TDCJ public information officer. "After the Attorney General's office let us know that no appeals were pending and the execution may proceed, it was about 11:30 p.m. At that point, our concern was that we would not be able to follow the execution protocol in the amount of time that was left.

"We're certainly not going to jeopardize our protocol, so we allowed the execution warrant to expire."

In Texas, Lyons said, executions can begin any time after 6 p.m. but must be carried out by midnight because issued death warrants expire at that time.

"I do not recall any scenario like this one ever taking place — this is the first time I’m aware of that, in the end, appeals were exhausted but we were left with insufficient time to carry out our protocol," she said.

The appeals which stood before the Supreme Court until late that night were not the only complication which arose that day.

"Initially, prison officials received notification at about 5 p.m. that [State District Judge Curt Henderson] had withdrawn the execution date, and 10 minutes later we were notified by the Attorney General’s office that prosecutors in Collin County intended to file appeals to overturn the motion to withdraw," Lyons said. "Hood had been loaded into a vehicle to return to death row in Livingston, but he did not make it past the back gate of the Walls Unit.

"He was, however, transported back to the unit after his death warrant had expired at midnight."

Once the June 17 warrant expired, Lyons said the case was returned to the Collin County District Court where the judge would again have to order the setting of an execution date.

The order issued Wednesday fulfilled that requirement and set Hood's 6th execution date.

"Because this will not be his 1st date — it's actually his 6th — the court has to give him at least 30 days notice prior to the execution," Lyons said. "If it were his 1st date, for example, he would have to be given 90 days notice, instead."

Hood was convicted of capital murder in 1989 for the deaths of Ronald Williamson and Tracie Lynn Wallace at Williamson's home near Dallas.

(source: Huntsville Item)





*****************************************

Judge sets execution date for Charles Hood


Presiding Judge John Nelms signed a death warrant today that set the execution date for Charles Hood. Hood is scheduled to be executed Wednesday, September 10, 2008. He was convicted of killing a Plano couple in 1989.

According to court documents, Hood's conviction is now final because the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals convicted him, issued a mandate and the United States Supreme Court denied Hood application for writ of certiorari. Further, the court denied his request for additional post-conviction forensic DNA testing and habeas corpus relief.

Yesterday, Texas Defender Services filed a motion to refrain from setting an execution date, which was denied.

Hood will be kept in custody by the Director of the Institutional Division of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice at Hunstville, Texas, until his execution date.

(source: Plano Star)