A 38-year-old El Paso serial killing case will return to court Sept. 15 when the man convicted of killing six girls and young women and burying them in the Northeast desert begins his latest effort to proclaim his innocence.
David Leonard Wood, now 68, was convicted of capital murder in 1992 and has been on death row since early 1993. His conviction was based largely on circumstantial evidence that tied him to the victims.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, without explanation, issued a ruling July 30 that the trial court should examine Wood’s claims that he’s innocent, that he was a victim of prosecutorial misconduct, and that he had ineffective counsel. The state’s highest criminal court had previously rejected a number of Wood’s appeals over the decade…