The Last 12 Weeks
In 1992, David Wood was convicted of murdering young women and girls and burying them in the desert outside El Paso, earning him the nickname the Desert Killer. More than 30 years later, his lawyers have one last chance to argue his innocence and stop his execution. “The Last 12 Weeks” follows a team of capital defense lawyers as they try to save their client’s life. The series, produced by Serial Productions and The New York Times in collaboration with The Marshall Project, focuses on the high stakes and at times bizarre work involved in trying to halt an execution. With an extraordinary level of access to a capital case in its final stretch, the longtime death penalty reporter Maurice Chammah takes listeners into the room with the lawyers as the clock ticks down. Maurice and Alvin Melathe, a producer, follow members of the defense team as they look for alternate suspects, try to find new evidence to poke holes in the case, and track down hard-to-find witnesses. In the end, will the lawyers’ efforts be enough to persuade a deeply skeptical court system — and stop an execution three decades in the making? “The Last 12 Weeks.” A five-part series … on a deadline.
Episodes
In 1992, David Wood was convicted of murdering young women and girls and burying them in the desert outside El Paso. He has been on death row ever since. “The Last 12 Weeks” takes you behind the scenes as a capital defense team races against the clock to stop an execution 30 years in the making.
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In 1992, David Wood became El Paso’s most notorious convicted serial killer. He has been on death row ever since. More than 30 years later, his lawyers have just a few months to argue his innocence and stop his execution.
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The way the state constructed the case, there’s no one big shiny piece of evidence for the defense to knock down. Instead, there are a million little threads to pull at. With less than two months until the execution, the lawyers comb through the evidence one last time, and a new witness offers unexpected revelations.
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In the final weeks before the execution date, the defense team has to decide just how far it’s willing to push people to save David Wood’s life. The team’s deliberations lead to a key witness on his deathbed … and the mother of one of the Desert Killer’s victims.
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To justify sentencing David Wood to death, prosecutors argued that he was a convicted rapist turned serial killer. And yet, Wood has insisted all along that isn’t true. We head to death row to hear him tell us why. But not before a victim of his earlier crimes has her say about the kind of person she believes he is.
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Days before the execution, the defense team scrambles to respond to an unexpected ruling, while the lead lawyer makes what may be his final visit to David Wood on death row. Everyone waits to find out Wood’s fate.
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