David Wood (Source: Texas Department of Criminal Justice)
AUSTIN, Texas - The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has paused the scheduled execution of an inmate who has been on death row longer than any other Texas inmate.
What we know:
The court published a per curiam order staying the execution of 67-year-old David Leonard Wood Tuesday, just two days before he was scheduled to be executed.
In 1992, Wood was sentenced to death for the killings of six women and girls whose bodies were found buried in the desert outside El Paso, Texas.
The decision from the nine-member court came with dissents from Judges Mary Lou Keel and Gina Parker.
Judge Bert Richardson did not participate in the decision.
Richardson has heard all of Wood's appeals in trial court since 2011.
The court did not give a reason for granting the stay in their order, they just reiterated the claims made by Wood's attorneys.
Claims made to the Texas Court of Appeals
Wood has always maintained he was innocent.
In Wood's filing he claimed the state obtained a conviction through false testimony and suppressing evidence.
Court documents claim the jailhouse informants that claimed Wood confessed to them were offered deals to falsify testimony in court.
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Wood also claims his original counsel was ineffective and that his original attorneys were not afforded all the evidence available during discovery.
What we don't know:
While the court issued the stay of Wood's execution indefinitely, the next steps were not known.
Wood's attorneys have not yet returned a request for comment.
Latest appeals
The court granting a stay comes after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear arguments that Richardson had used his appeal decisions as a way to further his career by using the decision to deny an earlier appeal to earn votes.
On Feb. 19, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals denied a request for a preliminary injunction after Wood's attorneys argued his rights to DNA testing under Texas law were being unfairly denied.
"He cannot demonstrate a likelihood of success on the merits," the court said of Wood's requests for further DNA testing.
"Granting Wood a stay at this late juncture would clearly inhibit the State’s vested interest in carrying out an otherwise valid sentence and would impair the finality of the state court’s criminal judgment," Judge Robert Pittman said.
An appeal to that decision was denied on March 7.
Other state and federal appeals
Wood appealed the court's decision unsuccessfully at both the state and federal levels.
He was originally scheduled to be executed in 2009.
Two days before his scheduled execution on Aug. 20, 2009, Wood filed a request claiming intellectual disability. The courts granted the request for a stay of execution, but Wood's claim was denied in 2014.
Since then, Wood has filed several motions requesting new items be DNA tested in order to prove his innocence.
Texas law allows a person convicted of a crime to ask for forensic testing of evidence if certain requirements are met.
In 2010, the courts granted Wood's request to test three items using methods that were not available before. The court determined that the new evidence would not be enough to believe Wood would not have been convicted if it had been available.
Wood continued to file new requests for DNA testing until 2024 when the Court of Criminal Appeals said Wood's testing requests were being used to "unreasonably delay the execution of sentence."
The court ruled Wood was "purposefully attempting to delay the execution of his sentence."
1992 Trial - The Desert Killer
Six women disappeared from the El Paso area between May and August 1987. The bodies were found in shallow graves in a desert area near the city between September 1987 and March 1988.
During his 1992 trial, prosecutors laid out that five of the victims had been seen on the day of their disappearance leaving with a man on either a red Harley-Davidson motorcycle or a beige pickup truck, the vehicle descriptions matched vehicles owned by Wood.
Two of Wood's cellmates testified that he had confessed to each of them that he was responsible for the killings.
David Wood's prison file (Texas Dept. of Criminal Justice)
One of the cellmates testified that Wood described how he would lure the victims by offering them drugs before taking them to the desert.
Judith Kelling testified that Wood had offered her a ride home while she was walking in July 1987. She told the court that she accepted the ride, but instead of taking her home he took her to the desert where he tied her to his truck and started digging a grave behind a bush.
Kelling told the court that Wood said he heard voices and made her get back in the truck, and they drove to another location.
At the new location, Kelling said Wood sexually assaulted her and left her naked in the desert after again hearing voices.
A Dallas County court found Wood guilty, and he was sentenced to death.
The Source: Information about the stay of execution comes from an order filed by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Backstory on previous appeals and Wood's trial come from court records and previous FOX reporting.