Up to date 8:00 p.m. 03.11.2025
The Texas Courtroom of Felony Appeals halted the execution of David Wooden on Tuesday, two days earlier than it was scheduled to happen. The keep was in response to proof of Wooden’s innocence and numerous constitutional violations at his trial, which Wooden’s attorneys outlined in a prolonged petition final month. However the court docket’s order left unanswered questions: It didn’t embrace particular causes for the keep or direct a decrease court docket choose to research Wooden’s claims.
The keep got here amid a flurry of last-minute litigation in a number of state and federal courts. Earlier Tuesday the federal Courtroom of Appeals for the fifth Circuit directed a district court docket choose in Dallas to just accept a brand new petition from Wooden, highlighting claims of false testimony at his trial.
Initially printed 6:00 a.m. 02.25.2025
On March 13, Texas plans to execute David Wooden, who turned recognized within the press because the “Desert Killer” after prosecutors argued he killed six women and girls and buried their our bodies on the outskirts of El Paso in 1987. He has maintained his innocence for practically 4 a long time. However his attorneys struggled to show it.
Their first main break got here in 2011, when a DNA check revealed one other man’s blood on one of many victims’ clothes. The attorneys requested to check extra objects, however a collection of state and federal judges refused, on the grounds that Wooden was making an attempt to “unreasonably delay the execution of his sentence.”
However a brand new break got here final fall, within the type of a voicemail. In a molasses drawl, a former prisoner named George Corridor invited Wooden’s attorneys to his dwelling in rural Missouri. He instructed them that in 1990, El Paso police had requested him for assist as they constructed their case towards Wooden.
“We will help you, in the event you will help us,” he remembered them saying. He took that as an invite to falsely declare Wooden had confessed to him once they have been incarcerated collectively, in trade for reward cash or early launch from jail. He refused to lie, he mentioned, however two different males from their cell block turned the star witnesses at Wooden’s loss of life penalty trial.
Wooden’s attorneys are together with these claims in a brand new petition to the Texas Courtroom of Felony Appeals, which they hope will halt the execution. “These males fabricated their story on the trial,” mentioned Wooden’s lawyer Greg Wiercioch.
Corridor’s account is a uncommon window into the sordid world of so-called “jailhouse snitches.” Given the adage that “snitches get stitches,” it’s all the extra putting how usually individuals have agreed to assist prosecutors by making false claims in probably the most high-stakes circumstances: Of 142 individuals who have been exonerated after being despatched to loss of life row from 1989 via 2024, jailhouse informants performed a task in 1 / 4 of their circumstances, in accordance with the Nationwide Registry of Exonerations.
Only some states require prosecutors to doc their use of jailhouse informants. For probably the most half, there is no such thing as a solution to know the way usually an informant has lied, or how usually somebody like Corridor has refused to turn out to be one.
“The entire system is designed to ensure individuals like Corridor don’t come ahead,” mentioned Harvard legislation professor Alexandra Natapoff, who wrote the definitive guide on informants referred to as “Snitching: Felony Informants and the Erosion of American Justice.”
In 1989, Corridor was serving 45 years for homicide and was housed on the Eastham Unit in Lovelady, Texas, when he discovered himself in a cell close to Wooden for a number of months. Wooden was in jail for a sexual assault — not his first — and complained that El Paso police have been investigating him for the desert murders. “Wooden would come to our cell [and say] ‘They’re throughout me, harassing me, and I didn’t do it,’” Corridor recalled in a current interview.
Corridor’s cellmate on the time, James Carl Sweeney, was in for housebreaking. As a result of he was learning legislation, Sweeney agreed to assist Wooden file a swimsuit accusing the El Paso Police Division of harassment. (The lawsuit was dismissed by a federal court docket.) Corridor remembers Sweeney saying: “The police have been making an attempt to railroad David Wooden.”
Within the meantime, Wooden’s personal cellmate, Randy Wells — a tattoo artist with an extended document that included cattle theft and an escape from jail — started giving Corridor a big again piece depicting a lady carrying a sword and driving a polar bear.
The tattoo was by no means completed, and transfers and releases quickly broke up the foursome. However in 1990, Corridor was introduced on a jail bus to the El Paso County Jail. He discovered himself reunited there with Sweeney, who was nonetheless serving time, and Wells, who had been launched — solely to be arrested once more, dealing with a homicide cost. Corridor mentioned that Wells defined that he’d provided their names to El Paso police and that they may all get offers in trade for testifying towards Wooden.
As Corridor tells it, a number of El Paso detectives took the three males, with out handcuffs, to a hamburger joint and a police station, seating them in a room with images of the victims, a big espresso pot, cigarettes and snacks. They handed the boys case recordsdata with crime scene pictures and interview notes with different witnesses, Corridor mentioned. “David Wooden is our suspect,” he remembers the detectives saying. “It’d be finest in the event you inform us one thing, as a result of we will’t let this man stroll.” Plus, there was reward cash for individuals who helped them.
George Corridor in Warsaw, Missouri, in 2025.
Corridor remembers Wells saying, “Nicely, I do know he buried our bodies within the desert.” Sweeney adopted swimsuit. However Corridor refused and was finally returned to the jail. “I didn’t need to get out by mendacity,” he recalled lately.
He was taken again to a state jail, the place he sensed he was in peril as a potential snitch: His new cellmate confronted him with a newspaper, which listed him as a witness towards Wooden. Corridor satisfied the cellmate that he’d refused. “The very fact is, I might have been stabbed.”
Two years later, Corridor noticed a newspaper article about Wooden’s loss of life penalty trial, the place Wells and Sweeney have been key witnesses. Wells testified that through the tattoo classes, Wooden talked about luring ladies into his truck with the promise of medication. “David instructed me that he would dig a grave,” Wells mentioned, in accordance with a trial transcript. “He would tie them up, and he would rape them.” Wells admitted on the witness stand that he was dealing with a homicide cost. In trade for testifying towards Wooden, in addition to his personal co-defendants, he’d get to plead responsible solely to forgery.
Sweeney gave an analogous account about listening to Wooden’s confessions. He denied testifying solely for reward cash — $25,000 was earmarked by El Paso officers for assist fixing the desert murders. However Wooden’s attorneys later discovered that he aggressively pursued this cash via a lawsuit towards the town, which finally settled with him for $13,000.
Some parts of Corridor’s account can’t be verified, notably the claims that Wells and Sweeney mentioned mendacity. Sweeney died in 2000, and Wells died earlier this yr. Each males had talked about Corridor of their testimony on the trial, and his title seems in information articles and court docket data in reference to the case. Greg Wiercioch, Wooden’s lead legal professional, discovered a letter that Corridor wrote to an El Paso prosecutor in 1991: “If the State subpoenas me for the trial, I’ll don’t have any option to be a witness for the protection!…Wells and [Sweeney] fabricated their tales collectively.”
On the time, Corridor had simply discovered that somebody — he by no means discovered who — had submitted a letter to a state parole board to protest his launch, that means he must spend a number of extra years in jail. He admits he can not show this had something to do along with his refusal to testify towards Wooden. However Natapoff, the legislation professor, mentioned it’s cheap for him to think about this was a type of retribution. Extra broadly, she defined, the entire system is skewed towards potential witnesses like Corridor. There’s little incentive to testify for the protection in such circumstances, as a result of “solely the federal government will pay you.”
The lead detective from Wooden’s case, John Guerrero, retired from the El Paso Police Division quickly after the trial. He referred to as the notion that anybody shared case recordsdata with the informants “preposterous” and “insane.” “I can guarantee you that didn’t occur with me,” he instructed The Marshall Undertaking, arguing that the jury would have discovered Wooden responsible, even with out the informants’ testimony. He pointed to different proof, which included quite a few witnesses saying they’d seen Wooden with the victims, a lady who claimed he practically killed her in an analogous method and fibers from Wooden’s vacuum cleaner just like these at one crime scene.
Then again, Wooden’s attorneys obtained a 1990 memo displaying that El Paso prosecutors didn’t have sufficient proof to cost him. “Now we have some our bodies and a suspect however no proof of an unlawful act linking the 2,” one prosecutor wrote to then-District Legal professional Steve Simmons. “Seldom does a serial killer hold all the main points a secret.” The memo particularly cited cellmates as potential sources of testimony — proper earlier than Wells and Sweeney agreed to testify.
The 2 now-retired El Paso County prosecutors who constructed the case towards Wooden didn’t reply to letters requesting interviews. Wooden’s attorneys are asking El Paso District Legal professional James Montoya, who took workplace earlier this yr, to take a recent take a look at the case and ask the courts to cease the execution. However in a press release to The Marshall Undertaking, Montoya mentioned, “it could be ill-advised to insert ourselves into the case now,” on condition that the Texas Legal professional Basic’s Workplace has been preventing Wooden’s appeals for the final a number of a long time.
The legal professional common’s workplace has but to reply to Corridor’s particular claims, however argued, in a 2003 court docket submitting, that Wells and Sweeney got here ahead earlier than they discovered of any potential rewards. Plus, Sweeney argued on the trial, that they had an incentive to not come ahead: “Snitches… normally get killed.”
Wooden’s attorneys observed that neither Sweeney nor Wells ever talked about of their trial testimony how the victims have been killed, which was suspicious as a result of it was a key element the police themselves by no means might affirm, given the state of the stays. Additionally they discovered that Wells had been accused by a prosecutor of mendacity within the trials of his co-defendants in a earlier case.
Corridor was finally launched from jail in 1994 and spent the subsequent 30 years on parole. He would periodically seek for Wooden’s title in Google, in search of developments within the case. When Texas set a date to execute Wooden in 2009, Corridor sat by his cellphone, debating whether or not to name the protection group. However he was afraid that some public official would search for a solution to argue he’d violated his parole. “I don’t put nothing previous the state of Texas,” he mentioned. That execution date was stayed by the court docket to listen to different claims within the case.
Attorneys for David Wooden are utilizing the claims of George Corridor, pictured, as they search to halt Wooden’s execution.
Whereas Corridor thought of whether or not to contact Wooden’s attorneys, attorneys for the Innocence Undertaking and related organizations have been working to free lots of of individuals from jail, usually by displaying how prosecutors relied on doubtful testimony from jailhouse informants. In 1989 — the identical yr Corridor crossed paths with Wooden, Wells and Sweeney — a California prisoner named Leslie White demonstrated on “60 Minutes” how straightforward it was for him to manufacture confessions, main a Los Angeles grand jury to search out issues in at the least 150 circumstances. The same scandal erupted in close by Orange County in 2014. That very same yr, a Marshall Undertaking investigation documented how an informant’s testimony performed a component within the loss of life sentence and execution of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was believed by many to have been harmless within the killings of his daughters.
In recent times, a few states have begun requiring prosecutors to trace their use of informants and have created procedures that allow protection attorneys, judges and jurors topic such offers to extra scrutiny. In 2017, a federal court docket dominated that New York jail officers couldn’t punish a person for refusing to behave as an informant.
After Corridor’s parole ended, final yr, he Googled his previous jail neighbor once more, noticed a brand new execution date and referred to as Wooden’s attorneys. “If the person’s responsible, then he deserves to be executed,” Corridor mentioned. “But when I don’t say one thing, that may be like me placing the needle in his arm.”
