Unusual GOP Pushback Grows Against Scheduled Texas Execution

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AUSTIN (CBSDFW.COM/AP) — A Republican lawmaker in Texas says a bipartisan group of legislators will take the highly unusual step of urging the state to halt the execution of a man who didn't pull the trigger during a fatal 1996 robbery.

Republican state Rep. Jeff Leach said Friday he's preparing a letter that will ask the state parole board to stop the execution of 43-year-old Jeffrey Wood.

Wood was 22-year-old in 1996 when he sat in a truck outside a gas station while his friend Daniel Reneau went inside a  Kerrville gas station to steal a safe. Reneau ended up killing clerk Kris Keeran during the robbery.

Reneau was executed in 2002.

Wood is scheduled to die by lethal injection Wednesday. He was convicted under a Texas law that makes a participant in a capital murder crime equally culpable, even though it was Wood's friend who shot a store clerk.

Leach is among the most conservative members of the Texas Legislature and says he supports the death penalty. He says the letter will be submitted this weekend.

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