Is it right to put an accomplice to death?
by Sam
Twelve years ago Jeffery Lee Wood sat in a truck outside a convenience store in Kerrville, Texas. Inside, his partner and roommate, Daniel Reneau, shot and killed Kriss Keeran, a cashier on duty at the store that evening. The killing, both say, happened because the robbery did not go according to the original plan. Reneau was executed for his crime in 2003 and, unusually, Wood also faced the death penalty, although he did not enter the store until after Keeran had been slain and did not himself inflict harm on anyone.
Wood’s case raises a number of complicated issues involving punishment. His lawyers and family have long argued that he suffers from a learning disability and is highly open to suggestion, which they believe made him uniquely vulnerable to Reneau. They also claim that he suffers from delusions. The initial trial record bears these assertions out. The first jury to hear Wood’s case judged him incompetent to stand trial. He was sent to a mental hospital until a second jury reversed this decision and deemed him competent to stand trial. Still, his behavior in trial was odd and he tried unsuccessfully to represent himself and subsequently commanded his appointed counselors not to cross-examine any witnesses. The jury found him guilty and sentenced him to death by lethal injection.
In 2002, the United States Supreme Court ruled definitively in Atkins v. Virginia that it is unconstitutional for states to execute “mentally retarded” persons. The court has yet to hand down consistent rulings on the other issue at question in the Woods case—whether it is constitutional to execute someone who did not actually commit murder. As the Washington Post explains:
If the execution moves forward, Wood, 35, will become only the eighth person to be put to death as an accomplice since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976, according to the Washington-based Death Penalty Information Center. More than 1,100 people have been executed during this period. The executed accomplices do not include those who were put to death for hiring someone to commit murder.
The court has historically reversed course on this issue. It ruled in 1982 that imposing the death penalty on someone who did not actually commit a murder – or “intend that a killing take place” – constituted cruel and unusual punishment, and therefore prohibited by the Eighth Amendment. In a 1987 case, however, the court said that, if someone was a “major participant” in the eventual crime, such an act could count as grounds for execution.
American sentencing practices reflect a preference for what is called ‘proportional justice.’ Not all offenders commit equivalent crimes, and we punish accordingly. We hand out citations for traffic offenses, throw people in jail for several months if they commit violent assault, send them to prison for years if they commit murder and, in some states, sentence them to death for what we consider especially heinous crimes (often involving multiple murders or some kind of sexual assault).