Maurice Shema

That way, the judges will be so overwhelmed, they'll have to hit the pause button, and Greg's client gets to live another day.

In fact, Greg's already been accused, pretty harshly, of delaying David Wood's execution in all kinds of ways.

In 2009, Wood was about to be put to death, and a day before it, Greg got them to delay by arguing that David Wood has an intellectual disability.

The courts ultimately reject this appeal, but it takes five years for them to rule on it.

Then they spend years arguing over evidence that was never DNA tested.

Last year, a judge summarizing the last 15 years of this case accused David's defense of a, quote, pattern of piecemeal litigation and delay.

Over those years, Gregg has filed motions to replace prosecutors, to claim a judge had a conflict of interest, to test this or that bit of evidence.

He lost all these arguments, but the judge's point was, this guy just throws spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks, and he does it one noodle at a time.

Other lawyers get accused of the same things.

There's a perception on the part of prosecutors and also lots of judges that lawyers like Greg are such extreme anti-death penalty zealots that they're willing to bend the rules, if not outright break them.

Greg and I finish up at the courthouse around lunchtime.

Before we head back to the hotel, he proposes we swing by someone's house first, a woman he's been trying to talk to for some time now, Ramona Dismukes.

Her importance as a witness is kind of questionable.

She was best friends with a girl who disappeared back in 1987.

A lot of people in El Paso assumed David Wood was responsible, but police never found evidence, and he wasn't convicted of it.

It's the kind of witness I could imagine skipping, but Greg decides it's worth a try.

We pull off the highway and drive up to this small house where a guy with a mohawk is hauling stuff out to a dumpster.

Greg hops out of the car and talks to him.

He comes back looking defeated.

But as we're pulling away, I see a woman in the rearview mirror.