01/31/2013
By Diana Washington Valdez
EL PASO TIMES
A 62-page court document filed by David Leonard Wood's defense asserts that the convicted serial killer from El Paso is mentally retarded and should therefore not be sentenced to die.
Gregory W. Wiercioch, the lawyer who represents Wood in the post-conviction appeal, prepared the document, "Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law," to rebut the state's arguments against Wood's claim of mental retardation.
The defense contends that Wood had low IQ scores, suffered an unusually difficult childhood, and failed as an adult to adapt socially, conceptually and practically.
According to documents cited by the defense, Wood was given six IQ tests as an adult between the age of 19 and 54 years old. His scores, in chronological order, were 111, 64, 71, 101, 67 and 57. However, records did not provide details on which IQ tests he took that correspond with three of those scores. The first score was recorded in 1977 and the most recent one in 2011.
"As the school records, trial and hearing testimony, and affidavits demonstrate," the defense document states, "Mr. Wood's significant intellectual and adaptive deficits manifested themselves before he reached the age of 18."
Wood's "disabling condition occurred during the developmental period," the document states, which is one of the three main requirements to prove mental retardation.
In 1989, Wood was convicted and sentenced to death for killing six girls and young women in 1987: Desiree Wheatley, Angelica Frausto, Susanna Ivy Williams, Rosa Maria Casio, Karen Baker and Dawn Smith. Their bodies were found buried in shallow graves in the Northeast El Paso desert, near the present Painted Dunes Golf Course.
He is appealing the death sentence.
The death row inmate's early years were marked by constant fights between his parents, a father who punished him with a paddle, and a mother who suffered from mental illness, according to court documents.
"Mr. Wood's parents, Leo and Betty, were singularly unprepared for the rigors of parenthood. Leo was 20 years old and Betty only 16 when they married," the document states. "One year later, their first child, Debbie. Within the next six years, three more children arrived, including David, the second oldest."
Wood and his siblings were sent to foster homes on a couple of occasions because of their parents' ongoing conflicts.
"David Wood's mother was continuously under the care of psychiatrists and doctors during his childhood," the defense document states. "She was institutionalized for a total of six months in a psychiatric hospital and received electro-convulsive shock treatments. Her treatment with prescription drugs was, according to Leo Wood, 'never-ending.' As a result of her psychological disorders and addiction to prescription drugs, Betty Wood was virtually never responsive to David's needs. Leo Wood testified that she treated David '[w]ithout love.' "
The parents divorced, remarried and divorced again. Both later remarried but to other people.
"At the punishment phase of Mr. Wood's (1989) capital trial, Dr. Donald T. Lunde, a psychologist and psychiatrist (now deceased), testified that he reviewed numerous documents showing that Mr. Wood was repeatedly administered IQ tests by the school district, welfare department consultants, and a social worker, according to the defense," according to the defense document. "In addition, Dr. Lunde found the amount and intensity of attention focused on Mr. Wood as a child and adolescent particularly compelling in concluding that his intellectual and adaptive deficits were congenital (existing from birth)."
"Mr. Wood's school records clearly demonstrate poor academic achievement," the defense documents states. "He flunked the first grade, the third grade, and the ninth grade; attended special education classes; and, eventually, dropped out of high school after the first semester of his second attempt at ninth grade. By the time he withdrew, Mr. Wood was seventeen-and-a-half years old, still a freshman in high school, three years behind his peers."
The defense document also states that Wood flunked the test to enter the Army, although it doesn't state when.
Wood's defense further argues in the document that Wood's behavior in prison should not be taken into account because prison is organized, managed by prison officials, and does not require inmates to use the kind of work and social skills that are required of most people to survive outside of prison.
"The fact that Mr. Wood possesses some communication skills, i.e., that he can express basic ideas and understand commands given by prison guards, does not preclude a diagnosis of mental retardation," the defense states.
Wood's lawyer also attacked the credibility of Thomas Allen, the forensic psychologist who testified in the 2011 post-conviction hearing, concerning Wood's mental capacity.
"Dr. Allen's methods for assessing Mr. Wood's adaptive functioning were not thorough or reliable. His methods do not comport with the guiding principles in the field of mental retardation," the defense document said. "In light of the compelling and abundant evidence of Mr. Wood's significant adaptive deficits during the developmental period ... Dr. Allen's testimony regarding Mr. Wood's adaptive behavior is not credible."
Allen had testified that he believed Wood was not retarded and that he showed signs instead of anti-social personality disorder.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2002 in a separate case, Atkins v. Virginia, that executing a mentally retarded person constitutes cruel and unjust punishment in violation of the U.S. Constitution. Wood filed an appeal based on the ruling in that case.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stayed the execution in 2009, one day before Wood was scheduled to be executed, in order for him to have a chance to present evidence of mental retardation. Wood is asking the court to impose a life sentence.
Visiting District Court Judge Bert Richardson of San Antonio, presiding over the 171st District Court, is expected to issue his recommendations next month. The Texas Criminal Court of Appeal will make the final ruling on whether to accept Wood's claim, or reject it and schedule a new execution date for him.
In summary, Wood's defense asserts that Wood meets the main legal requirements for mental retardation: He has significant limitations in intellectual functioning; he has significant limitations in adaptive behavior, and he exhibited significant limitations both in intellectual functioning and adaptive behavior before the age of 18.
A determination on DNA testing of evidence from the 1987 murders is still pending.
More articles:
Sep 6, 1987: Bodies identified as missing women
Oct 24, 1987: Buried body identified
Oct 28, 1987: 4th body indentified as teen girl
Oct 29, 1987: Rape suspect served 7 years for sex offenses
Nov 18, 1987: Police indentify fifth body as missing teen-age girl
Victims of the 1987 crime wave in the Northeast
1988: Wood and the desert deaths: a chronology
David Wood's path from El Paso to Death Row
Aug 10, 2009: 'Desert killer' David Wood to be executed Aug. 20
Aug 20, 2009: Execution stayed
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