Alvin Maleth

It doesn't mean David Wood is innocent.

Ramona Dismukes, who the Fifth Circuit had singled out in their own ruling just hours earlier, well, the AG's office had the opposite reaction to her claims.

They write that Dismukes has, quote, serious credibility issues and argue that her whole story sounds pretty unbelievable, that this woman, Judith Kelling, would admit to making up a rape allegation, to perjury, effectively, and to railroading David Wood, all to Ramona, a teenager she'd just met on a public street.

And then there's George Hall, the man who held his tongue for 30-plus years before claiming that two jailhouse informants fabricated testimony to implicate David Wood in the desert murders.

The prosecution doesn't directly challenge Hall's claims.

Instead, they use them to criticize Gregg, as in, you had more than 15 years to find this guy.

Why is he only showing up now?

Diligence, they write, requires more than waiting for witnesses to come forward.

And this brings us to the through line of the prosecution's arguments, which is a familiar one, but worded pretty sharply here.

that Greg's latest petition is really just one more effort to manipulate the court.

The prosecution spends several pages outlining the many, many motions Greg has filed in the last 15 years that have ultimately been denied by the courts.

The point being that Greg has had so much time to look for evidence of his client's innocence, and now here he is with more half-baked theories and conveniently urgent evidence.

that if this was your first look at the case, maybe you wouldn't see it, but all you have to do is look at the record to know what's going on here.

The state says, quote, with his second execution date rapidly approaching, Wood has ramped up his efforts to improperly delay justice.

And his whole attempt is, quote, scattershot at best and does nothing to erode the evidence that the jury used to convict him.

With a little over 50 hours to go until the execution, Greg decides to hand off the litigation for the moment to the team in Dallas.

He wants to go visit David to update him on everything that's happened this morning, but also to spend what could be some of their last few hours together.

I join him in the car on the way to death row.

Greg is wearing his lucky tie, a pale blue number with circles on it.

It's lucky because he won at the Supreme Court once while wearing it.