Alvin Maleth

That some judges believed these stories enough to stop the execution felt arbitrary.

But if they hadn't bought it, David Wood would be dead right now.

And that would feel arbitrary too.

We began following these lawyers thinking we'd get to watch their tactics, wondering if they were selling a story or raising legitimate doubts about an unjust conviction.

And in the end, I think both might be true and neither is really the point.

The point is that somehow we've arrived at a place where two separate courts, one federal and one state, have both found serious problems in this case.

And this is after 30-plus years and layers and layers of appeals, after this case crossed the desks of dozens of judges.

So why now?

Well, the obvious answer is that the specter of an execution sparked a certain urgency to reexamine every little aspect of the case.

But there's a trade-off, too.

Relying on a deadline as irreversible as an execution is a cruel kind of brinksmanship, putting someone's life in the middle of an exhausting game of chicken.

The effect goes beyond the person on death row.

You can hear it in the tired voices of attorneys and in the jaded sighs of a victim's mother, too.

And besides, the last 12 weeks haven't gotten us any closer to knowing what really happened in a stretch of desert in northeast El Paso in 1987.

It's been more than a year since the stay of execution was issued.

David Wood's prospects have never been better, but it's almost impossible to know whether he'll ever be declared innocent, much less walk out of prison.

there's still no date set for a hearing on David Wood's innocence claim.

For all of the blame Greg has taken for delaying this case, now other parties, the various judges and prosecutors involved, are contributing to the delays too.

And ironically, from Greg's perspective, the faster things can happen now, the better.

After all, David Wood is almost 70 years old.