The Texas “law of parties” allow prosecutors to seek and secure the execution of individuals involved in what is more generally known as “felony murder” crimes—offenses that involve more than one person, all of whom can be prosecuted as equal participants even though one or more of the participants may have had no direct involvement in the murder.
Since 1985, there have been 11 such executions carried out in six states in this country, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Six of those executions were carried out by Texas, the last being Joseph Garcia, who was the fourth member of the infamous Texas Seven to be executed for the murder of a police officer following their escape from a Texas prison on December 13, 2000.
The last two surviving members of the group, Patrick Murphy and Randy Halprin, have faced different fates in recent years.
The 60-year-old Murphy was granted a stay of execution in November 2019 because he had been denied equal access to his Buddhist spiritual advisor as compared to condemned inmates’ access to Christian spiritual advisors.
The 44-year-old Halprin received a recommendation for a new trial on October 12, 2021 from a Dallas County district court judge because Halprin’s trial judge made anti-Semitic remarks during his 2003 trial. The new trial recommendation must now be approved by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
In September 2022 the prosecution endorsed Halprin’s bid for a new trial, telling the Court of Criminal Appeals that the trial judge’s bias against Halprin deprived him of a fair and impartial trial.
Twenty-six other states besides Texas still allow for the execution of individuals involved in felony murder offenses, even though they did not fire the fatal shot or had no prior knowledge that a fatal shot would be fired or, worse yet, were not even present when the fatal shot was fired.
The death penalty case of Jeffery Lee Wood illustrates the harsh reality of how the Texas law of parties works.
In 1996, Wood was 22 years old when he joined a plan with 21-year-old Daniel Earl Reneau to rob a gas station/convenience store in Kerrville, Texas. They ultimately abandoned the plan to rob the store. But later that evening the pair stopped at the store to purchase “snacks,” so thought Wood.
Reneau went inside the store while Wood remained outside in a pickup truck. Instead of purchasing snacks, Reneau robbed the store, killing the clerk in the process. Wood had no prior knowledge that Reneau had a gun with him, much less knowledge that he planned to rob the store and kill the clerk.
Nonetheless, under Texas’ law of parties, both men were tried and convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death.
Reneau was executed in June 2002 and Wood received an execution date in 2008 only to have the execution stayed by a San Antonio federal judge because he had a learning disability and an IQ of 80.
A second execution date was set for him in 2016 but it was stayed as well, this time by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
By 2016, through statewide and national media attention, Wood’s case had become a symbol of the unfairness of the death penalty in law of parties cases.
The Wood case, and other factors, prompted a bipartisan group of Texas lawmakers in 2017 to introduce a “reform” bill to end the death penalty in law of parties cases. The bill had only one assistant district attorney to testify against it.
The bill died in the state’s legislative body. A reasonable inference can be drawn that the Texas Seven case still influenced a significant number of lawmakers not to touch this “hot potato” subject. The State has every intention of executing Murphy and Halprin at some point in the future.
The appeals court in November 2018 upheld Wood’s conviction and death sentence. He remains on Texas’ death row.
Texas lawmakers decided not to even take up the law of parties issue in its 2019 legislative session. The December 2018 execution of Joseph Garcia was still fresh in the minds of lawmakers, a reminder that only Murphy and Halprin were left to dispense with. They didn’t want to even debate the issue when the legislative session opened in February 2019.
However, when the Legislature opened its doors in February 2021 and there was no immediate execution date in place for either Murphy or Halprin, lawmakers in the House not only introduced a bill that banned the death penalty in law of parties cases but passed the bill by an overwhelmingly nonpartisan vote.
Still, the bill died again, this time in the Texas Senate.
The same legislative scenario proved true in 2023. A bill was introduced with significant bipartisan support, but it could not advance through all the procedural bars erected in the House to stop it.
Recent polling reveals that an increasing number of Americans no longer have faith in or support for the death penalty. Issues like the law of parties’ executions, the fact that 190 former death row inmates since 1973 have been exonerated and that as many as 20 people have been executed since 1976 who were probably innocent have contributed significantly to the waning support for the death penalty in this country.
