The Last 12 Weeks

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**Rachel Abrams** (0:36)
From The New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is The Daily on Sunday.
Today, we've got a little something different for you, because our colleagues over at Serial Productions have a new series out that we're excited to share. It's called The Last 12 Weeks, and it follows a team of death penalty lawyers and their last-minute scramble to try to stop their clients' execution in Texas. And what's kind of incredible about it is that the team at Serial managed to convince a team of death penalty lawyers to let them follow them around in the middle of an actual case. They put microphones in the room as the lawyers tried to argue their case to witnesses, to the media, to a victim's mother.
And these are the kinds of behind-the-scenes conversations you rarely get to hear, and they are riveting. So we're sharing the first episode of the five-part series, a collaboration with The Marshall Project and hosted by reporter Maurice Chama. You can find all episodes by searching for the last 12 weeks wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, here's the show.

**Maurice Chema** (1:36)
In the fall of 2024, a criminal defense lawyer got the kind of phone call that most lawyers can only dream about.
It concerned a client of his, a guy named David Wood, one of Texas' most notorious serial killers. He was sitting on death row months away from his execution.

**George Hall** (1:53)
Good, thanks George Hall. And I would like to discuss with you something about David Wood.
Why I don't condone what has happened in that case.

**Maurice Chema** (2:09)
The man on the phone, George Hall, thought something corrupt had gone down in David Wood's trial. It had happened more than 30 years ago, but for 30 years he'd said nothing, mostly because he was afraid to.
For those 30 years, he'd been on parole. He worried if he aggravated the authorities, they might find some way to send him back to prison. But now his parole had ended, and George Hall was ready to tell his story, which he'd eventually put into a sworn declaration. That story goes like this.
Back in the late 80s, George Hall and David Wood were locked up together at the Eastham Unit in Texas. George Hall was in for murder. David Wood was in for rape. They weren't particularly close. David Wood was quiet, didn't talk much. But when he did, George says, it was mainly to complain about how the police in his hometown of El Paso were harassing him, investigating him for a series of murders.

**George Hall** (3:01)
Basically what he said was El Paso was trying to pin it on him.

**Maurice Chema** (3:06)
David Wood insisted he had nothing to do with those murders. George thought, maybe he didn't, maybe he did. Either way, he didn't really care.
Eventually, George and David Wood were separated, moved to different facilities hundreds of miles apart. One day, George says he's in the prison library, ready to go to lunch when two officers come in and tell him to pack his stuff.

**George Hall** (3:27)
I said, where am I going? They wouldn't tell me. So next thing I know, I'm on a bus ride down to El Paso.

**Maurice Chema** (3:34)
A few hours later, George finds himself in a holding cell in the El Paso County jail. Two other guys join him in there. George recognizes them both as guys who had celled with David Wood.
One of them says to the group, they have an opportunity. They can all get money maybe or less prison time. All they have to do is snitch on David Wood.
Soon enough, they're escorted out of the cell and into a car. George says, that's when the cops start rolling out the red carpet.

**George Hall** (4:02)
They give us the tour up scenic drive up the mountainside, look across the Rio Grande, look into old Mexico and this and that and whatever. I'm sitting there thinking to myself, we're not handcuffed, what if we jump out and run?