The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals [official website] granted [opinion, PDF] a stay of execution on Friday for murder accomplice Jeffrey Lee Wood. Wood and Daniel Reneau attempted to rob [CNN report] a gas station in 1996. Wood waited in the car while Reneau went inside the store and ultimately shot and killed the store’s clerk. In Texas, the distinction between committing a murder and acting as an accomplice to murder does not prevent the latter from being charged and convicted of first degree murder. The appellate court remanded the following two arguments to the trial court for resolution while the execution is stayed: false and misleading testimony by the prosecution’s psychiatrist and false psychiatric testimony concerning Wood’s future dangerousness, both allegedly presented in violation of due process. Wood’s mental capacity has been at the forefront of the argument against his execution, but was never brought before the jury that imposed his death sentence. A federal judge previously stayed [NYT report] Wood’s execution in 2008 to grant a hearing on whether he was mentally competent.

Capital punishment [JURIST Commentary report] remains a controversial issue worldwide. Last week, UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein urged [JURIST report] the Maldives to abide by a decades-old moratorium on the death penalty. Earlier this month, the Delaware Supreme Court ruled [JURIST report] that the state’s death penalty statute is unconstitutional. Last month, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan stated [JURIST report] that he would approve reinstating the death penalty. In February, a spokesperson for the OHCHR urged [JURIST report] the Indonesian government to halt all executions of people convicted of drug-related offenses.