Thursday, September 04, 2008

Hood gets hearing on judge-prosecutor relationship

Chuck Lindell is reporting that Judge Greg Brewer has scheduled a hearing for next Monday, which is before the scheduled execution of Charles Hood. Austin-American Statesman also published a long article about the case in today's paper.

Death row inmate Charles Dean Hood will no longer have to wait until after his Sept. 10 execution date to argue that his trial judge and prosecutor should be forced to answer questions about their alleged relationship.

Hood claims he was denied a fair trial because former Judge Verla Sue Holland and former Collin County District Attorney Thomas O’Connell were in a secret relationship during his 1990 trial.

Judge Robert Dry had scheduled a Sept. 12 hearing on Hood’s request to compel Holland and O’Connell to testify, but Dry recused himself from the case Wednesday.

Hood’s new judge, Greg Brewer, on Thursday set a hearing on the matter for 9 a.m. Monday in Collin County.

Hood was sentenced to die in the 1989 shooting deaths of his boss, Ronald Williamson, and Williamson’s girlfriend Tracie Wallace in their Plano home.

Hood’s bloody fingerprints were found inside the home. When he was arrested a day after the killings, in Indiana, Hood had the victims’ car, clothes, jewelry, camera and credit cards.

See today’s story on the Hood case here.


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