PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am grateful to 'Authory' a valuable service which creates a portfolio of all of my posts since I fired my first post into the cybersphere on the Charles Smith Blog on September 29, 2007, some 17 years ago. Today's post is number 11, 784. Yikes! Yes, this is a compulsion, but it's a healthy one! One of the best features of 'Authory' (which I am trying out on the Blog for the first time), is a search engine for the portfolio which makes it easier for readers to follow the many important cases, issues and developments (and occasional rants) in the area of flawed pathology, flawed pathologists, and whatever else - no matter where in the world - might cross my mind. So, dear reader, you can access the portfolio at the following link. Just type the inquiry into the search box at the following link, and hit enter. (The search box is on the top write side of the page under 'Read more.' Why not try it out, and, as encouraging use of this search function by my readers is rather new to me, any feedback on how it is working would be appreciated at: hlevy15@gmail.com. Cheers!
https://authory.com/HaroldLevy
Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.
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PETITION: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/stop-the-execution-of-david-wood-in-texasIn one of the most sensational murder cases in Texas, Applicant David Wood, the “Desert Serial Killer,” seeks to overturn his conviction and sentence of death because he is actually innocent. At first glance, the endeavor seems quixotic. But David Wood’s case illustrates the danger created by the combustible mix of a high-profile crime and intense public pressure to solve it. These factors led to a rush to judgment that prematurely shifted an evidence-based investigation into a suspect-based investigation. Tunnel vision and confirmation bias compounded the error. Prosecutorial deception, false testimony, suppressed evidence, ineffective representation, and jailhouse snitch testimonythe canary in the coalmine of wrongful convictionsthwarted justice in his case."
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PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Hall’s account is a rare window into the sordid world of so-called “jailhouse snitches.” Given the adage that “snitches get stitches,” it is all the more striking how often people have agreed to help prosecutors by making false claims in the most high-stakes cases: Of 142 people who were exonerated after being sent to death row from 1989 through 2024, jailhouse informants played a role in a quarter of their cases, according to the National Registry of Exonerations."
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STORY: "He Refused to Become a Jailhouse Snitch. Can He Stop David Wood’s Execution?, by Maurice Chamah, published by The Marshall Project, on February 25, 2025. (Maurice Chammah is a staff writer and host of the podcast “Just Say You're Sorry,” as well as the author of “Let the Lord Sort Them: The Rise and Fall of the Death Penalty.” He writes narrative features on a range of criminal justice subjects, including the death penalty, forensics and art and music by incarcerated people.) SUB:-HEADING:Texas plans to execute Wood in March. George Hall says police encouraged him to lie about Wood confessing six murders to him. PHOTO CAPTION: "George Hall, pictured, says that El Paso police pushed him to falsely claim that David Wood, who was incarcerated with him, had confessed that he had killed six girls and women."
GIST: "On March 13, Texas plans to execute David Wood, who became known in the press as the “Desert Killer” after prosecutors argued he killed six girls and women and buried their bodies on the outskirts of El Paso in 1987. He has maintained his innocence for nearly four decades. But his lawyers struggled to prove it.
Their first major break came in 2011, when a DNA test revealed another man’s blood on one of the victims’ clothing. The lawyers asked to test more items, but a series of state and federal judges refused, on the grounds that Wood was trying to “unreasonably delay the execution of his sentence.”
But a new break came last fall, in the form of a voicemail. In a molasses drawl, a former prisoner named George Hall invited Wood’s lawyers to his home in rural Missouri. He told them that in 1990, El Paso police had asked him for help as they built their case against Wood.
“We can help you, if you can help us,” he remembered them saying. He took that as an invitation to falsely claim Wood had confessed to him when they were incarcerated together, in exchange for reward money or early release from prison. He refused to lie, he said, but two other men from their cell block became the star witnesses at Wood’s death penalty trial.
Wood’s lawyers are including these claims in a new petition to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which they hope will halt the execution. “These men fabricated their story at the trial,” said Wood’s lawyer Greg Wiercioch.
Hall’s account is a rare window into the sordid world of so-called “jailhouse snitches.” Given the adage that “snitches get stitches,” it is all the more striking how often people have agreed to help prosecutors by making false claims in the most high-stakes cases: Of 142 people who were exonerated after being sent to death row from 1989 through 2024, jailhouse informants played a role in a quarter of their cases, according to the National Registry of Exonerations.
Only a few states require prosecutors to document their use of jailhouse informants. For the most part, there is no way to know how often an informant has lied, or how often someone like Hall has refused to become one.
“The whole system is designed to make sure people like Hall don’t come forward,” said Harvard law professor Alexandra Natapoff, who wrote the definitive book on informants called “Snitching: Criminal Informants and the Erosion of American Justice.”
In 1989, Hall was serving 45 years for murder and was housed at the Eastham Unit in Lovelady, Texas, when he found himself in a cell near Wood for a few months. Wood was in prison for a sexual assault — not his first — and complained that El Paso police were investigating him for the desert murders. “Wood would come to our cell [and say] ‘They’re all over me, harassing me, and I didn’t do it,’” Hall recalled in a recent interview.
Hall’s cellmate at the time, James Carl Sweeney, was in for burglary. Because he was studying law, Sweeney agreed to help Wood file a suit accusing the El Paso Police Department of harassment. (The lawsuit was dismissed by a federal court.) Hall recalls Sweeney saying: “The police were trying to railroad David Wood.”
In the meantime, Wood’s own cellmate, Randy Wells — a tattoo artist with a long record that included cattle theft and an escape from jail — began giving Hall a large back piece depicting a woman carrying a sword and riding a polar bear.
The tattoo was never finished, and transfers and releases soon broke up the foursome. But in 1990, Hall was brought on a prison bus to the El Paso County Jail. He found himself reunited there with Sweeney, who was still serving time, and Wells, who had been released — only to be arrested again, facing a murder charge. Hall said that Wells explained that he’d offered their names to El Paso police and that they could all get deals in exchange for testifying against Wood.
As Hall tells it, several El Paso detectives took the three men, without handcuffs, to a hamburger joint and a police station, seating them in a room with photographs of the victims, a large coffee pot, cigarettes and snacks.
They handed the men case files with crime scene photos and interview notes with other witnesses, Hall said. “David Wood is our suspect,” he recalls the detectives saying. “It’d be best if you tell us something, because we can’t let this guy walk.” Plus, there was reward money for people who helped them.
Hall remembers Wells saying, “Well, I know he buried bodies in the desert.” Sweeney followed suit. But Hall refused and was eventually returned to the jail. “I didn’t want to get out by lying,” he recalled recently.
He was taken back to a state prison, where he sensed he was in danger as a possible snitch: His new cellmate confronted him with a newspaper, which listed him as a witness against Wood. Hall convinced the cellmate that he’d refused. “The fact is, I could have been stabbed.”
Two years later, Hall saw a newspaper article about Wood’s death penalty trial, where Wells and Sweeney were key witnesses. Wells testified that during the tattoo sessions, Wood talked about luring women into his truck with the promise of drugs. “David told me that he would dig a grave,” Wells said, according to a trial transcript. “He would tie them up, and he would rape them.”
Wells admitted on the witness stand that he was facing a murder charge. In exchange for testifying against Wood, as well as his own co-defendants, he’d get to plead guilty only to forgery.
Sweeney gave a similar account about hearing Wood’s confessions. He denied testifying solely for reward money — $25,000 was earmarked by El Paso officials for help solving the desert murders. But Wood’s lawyers later found that he aggressively pursued this money through a lawsuit against the city, which eventually settled with him for $13,000.
Some elements of Hall’s account cannot be verified, particularly the claims that Wells and Sweeney discussed lying. Sweeney died in 2000, and Wells died earlier this year.
Both men had mentioned Hall in their testimony at the trial, and his name appears in news articles and court records in connection with the case. Greg Wiercioch, Wood’s lead attorney, found a letter that Hall wrote to an El Paso prosecutor in 1991: “If the State subpoenas me for the trial, I will have no choice to be a witness for the defense!...Wells and [Sweeney] fabricated their stories together.”
At the time, Hall had just learned that someone — he never learned who — had submitted a letter to a state parole board to protest his release, meaning he would have to spend several more years in prison. He admits he cannot prove this had anything to do with his refusal to testify against Wood.
But Natapoff, the law professor, said it’s reasonable for him to imagine this was a form of retribution. More broadly, she explained, the whole system is skewed against potential witnesses like Hall. There is little incentive to testify for the defense in such cases, because “only the government can pay you.”
The lead detective from Wood’s case, John Guerrero, retired from the El Paso Police Department soon after the trial. He called the notion that anyone shared case files with the informants “preposterous” and “insane.” “I can assure you that did not happen with me,” he told The Marshall Project, arguing that the jury would have found Wood guilty, even without the informants’ testimony.
He pointed to other evidence, which included numerous witnesses saying they’d seen Wood with the victims, a woman who claimed he nearly killed her in a similar way and fibers from Wood’s vacuum cleaner similar to those at one crime scene.
On the other hand, Wood’s lawyers obtained a 1990 memo showing that El Paso prosecutors did not have enough evidence to charge him. “We have some bodies and a suspect but no evidence of an illegal act linking the two,” one prosecutor wrote to then-District Attorney Steve Simmons. “Seldom does a serial killer keep all the details a secret.” The memo specifically cited cellmates as possible sources of testimony — right before Wells and Sweeney agreed to testify.
The two now-retired El Paso County prosecutors who built the case against Wood did not respond to letters requesting interviews. Wood’s lawyers are asking El Paso District Attorney James Montoya, who took office earlier this year, to take a fresh look at the case and ask the courts to stop the execution.
But in a statement to The Marshall Project, Montoya said, “it would be ill-advised to insert ourselves into the case now,” given that the Texas Attorney General’s Office has been fighting Wood’s appeals for the last several decades.
The attorney general’s office has yet to respond to Hall’s specific claims, but argued, in a 2003 court filing, that Wells and Sweeney came forward before they learned of any potential rewards. Plus, Sweeney argued at the trial, they had an incentive to not come forward: “Snitches… usually get killed.”
Wood’s lawyers noticed that neither Sweeney nor Wells ever mentioned in their trial testimony how the victims were killed, which was suspicious because it was a key detail the police themselves never could confirm, given the state of the remains.
They also found that Wells had been accused by a prosecutor of lying in the trials of his co-defendants in a previous case. Hall was eventually released from prison in 1994 and spent the next 30 years on parole. He would periodically search for Wood’s name in Google, looking for developments in the case.
When Texas set a date to execute Wood in 2009, Hall sat by his phone, debating whether to call the defense team. But he was afraid that some public official would look for a way to argue he’d violated his parole. “I don’t put nothing past the state of Texas,” he said. That execution date was stayed by the court to hear other claims in the case.
While Hall considered whether to contact Wood’s attorneys, lawyers for the Innocence Project and similar organizations were working to free hundreds of people from prison, often by showing how prosecutors relied on dubious testimony from jailhouse informants.
In 1989 — the same year Hall crossed paths with Wood, Wells and Sweeney — a California prisoner named Leslie White demonstrated on “60 Minutes” how easy it was for him to fabricate confessions, leading a Los Angeles grand jury to find problems in at least 150 cases.
A similar scandal erupted in nearby Orange County in 2014. That same year, a Marshall Project investigation documented how an informant’s testimony played a part in the death sentence and execution of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was believed by many to have been innocent in the killings of his daughters.
In recent years, a few states have begun requiring prosecutors to track their use of informants and have created procedures that let defense lawyers, judges and jurors subject such deals to more scrutiny. In 2017, a federal court ruled that New York prison officials could not punish a man for refusing to act as an informant.
After Hall’s parole ended, last year, he Googled his old prison neighbor again, saw a new execution date and called Wood’s lawyers. “If the man’s guilty, then he deserves to be executed,” Hall said. “But if I don’t say something, that would be like me putting the needle in his arm.”
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985
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FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
