Is Charles Hood Still Alive?

The last time I wrote in this blog about Charles Hood, a convicted murderer on death row in Texas, he has just received a reprieve. This was a little more than a year ago, in June 2008, and controversy swirled over whether the district attorney who had prosecuted his case had been having an affair with the judge who presided over that trial.

I confessed that the controversy was rather playing with my head.

Hood survived his June 2008 execution date, which ended up being re-set to September amid a flurry of legal manuveuring.

He seems to have survived the September execution date, as well, because an appellate court decided the jury instructions at his trial had been flawed. At about the same time, the judge who had delivered those instructions and the prosecutor admitted that, yes, they had been lovers.

That was the last I've heard of the case. I have to imagine that he is still alive, because I think my google search would have turned up news of his execution if it had happened. Is he still on death row? Awaiting what? a new trial? hearings on a new trial?

Googling, by the way, is somewhat complicated by the face that there is a literary character named Charles Hood (a James Bond clone is a series of spy novels by Stephen Coulter), and there was a lyricist of some repute named Basil Charles Hood in the early years of the 20th century writing for the London stage. Indeed, Arthur Sullivan composed music for Hood's words after Sullivan decided he was through with Gilbert.

If you can filter past those other Charles Hoods, you might find out something about the Texas convict and his appeals.