| Steven Michael Woods Jr. | |
| Birth Date: | 1980 4, mf=yes |
| Birth Place: | Detroit, Michigan, U.S. |
| Death Place: | Huntsville Unit, Huntsville, Texas, U.S. |
| Education: | Milford High School, finished 11th grade |
| Known For: | Tried under the Texas law of parties |
| Conviction Status: | Executed |
| Conviction Penalty: | Death (August 21, 2002) |
| Conviction: | Capital murder |
| Death Cause: | Execution by lethal injection |
Steven Michael Woods Jr. (April 17, 1980 – September 13, 2011)[1] was an American who was executed by lethal injection in the state of Texas.[2] Woods was sentenced to death after a jury convicted him of the capital murders of Ronald Whitehead, 21, and Bethena Brosz, 19, on May 2, 2001, in The Colony, Texas.[3] Woods petitioned to media outlets for prisoner rights in February 2004.[4]
He was incarcerated on the Texas state death row for men, located in the Allan B. Polunsky Unit (formerly the Terrell Unit) in West Livingston, Texas. In late 2006, Woods was part of a hunger strike in Polunsky, to oppose death-row inmates' treatment.[5]
Woods' co-defendant, Marcus Rhodes, pleaded guilty to shooting both victims to death with a firearm in the same criminal transaction and received a life sentence. During the trial, authorities were revealed to have recovered backpacks belonging to the slain pair along with shell casings and a bloodied knife in Rhodes' car. Guns used in the slayings were also recovered from the home of Rhodes' parents.[6]
However, in Texas, the law of parties states that a person can be criminally responsible for the actions of another if he or she aids and abets, conspires with the principal, or anticipates the crime. Although Rhodes pleaded guilty to the murders and Woods did not, and no physical evidence tied Woods to the scene, Woods was executed for the crime.[7] Witnesses testified at Woods' 2002 trial that Rhodes and he said that they lured Whitehead to an isolated road on the pretense of a drug deal and that Woods shot and killed him, because Whitehead knew about a killing 2 months earlier in California. Rhodes was later found guilty of the California murder and Woods was not. Prosecutors said Brosz was merely driving her boyfriend Whitehead to the drug deal. Brosz had been killed because she witnessed Whitehead's death, yelled, and then attempted to flee.[2]
The fairness of Woods' case and punishment was criticized by Amnesty International.[8] Woods' criminal case was reported locally and internationally.[9] [10] Woods' final motion for a stay was denied on September 2, 2011.[11]
In his last words, Woods stated:
Woods then took several deep breaths before all body movement stopped. A needle carrying the lethal drugs into his right arm pierced a green tattoo of a rose branch. The same distinctive tattoo had identified him when he was arrested. Woods was pronounced dead on September 13, 2011, at 6:22 p.m.[12] Woods' was the 10th execution carried out in Texas in 2011[13] and the 474th since Texas resumed the death penalty in 1982.