Maurice Shema

The victims' families were demonstrating in public.

And so they took every bit of evidence and massaged it to fit David Wood or discarded it if it fit someone else.

On the way out of the courthouse, Greg says he wants to grab one more thing from a clerk.

He asks for any and all criminal records related to a guy named Michael Plyler.

This is a new name to me.

It wasn't on the El Paso PD's list of 36 suspects.

But the other night, Greg came across Plyler's name in old state records, along with a picture of a truck, which looked a lot like David Wood's truck.

So Greg wondered, could this all be a case of mistaken identity?

He wants to look through Plyler's criminal files to see if there's anything in there that might tie him to the case beyond the truck.

Like if he went by the nickname Skeeter.

This depends on believing David Wood about the nickname, which Greg does.

But either way, this Plyler deep dive seems to me like a real long shot.

And it reminds me of a criticism I've heard a lot, mostly from prosecutors and judges.

They say lawyers like Greg have years to do this stuff, but they wait until the last minute so they can maximize the drama.

I asked him about this.

So these are files that you've had for a long time and you're just now...

I guess I wondered if this name had emerged in something you just got.

He says it's buried in 12,000 pages of records.

His point being that, yes, he's technically had Michael Plyler's name for years, but he's been working solo for much of that time, so he's had to pick and choose what to focus on.

But it's also true that Greg is incentivized to stretch this out as much as possible, to show up at court with new information right before the execution.