This is especially tragic concerning our system of justice since IMO Charles Dean Hood is guilty as hell.
The Crime: On November 1, 1989, Charles Dean Hood was living with his boss, Ronald Williamson, and Williamson?s girlfriend, Tracie Wallace. At 11:30 a.m., Williamson came home for lunch and found a note allegedly from his girlfriend saying that she had gone jogging. However, Williamson suspected something was wrong since Tracie?s name was misspelled on the note. Williamson called the police at 11:53 a.m. and told them that he believed that his girlfriend had been abducted. During this tape-recorded phone call, Williamson indicated that someone named ?Dean? had already called the police from Williamson's residence to report a burglary, but Williamson wanted to add a possible abduction. However, the police noted that no previous calls to the police had been made or recorded from the Williamson residence. A second voice could be heard in the background of the tape; the voice was later identified as Hood?s. Hood was known to go by his middle name, ?Dean.?
When the police arrived at Williamson?s house at 11:57 a.m., they found Williamson dead on the kitchen floor. The police searched the house and found blood outside a closet door, and a weight machine propped up against it. Inside the closet they found Wallace?s body, wrapped in two garbage bags layered on top of each other. Both victims died from gunshot wounds to their heads. Wallace had been shot in her bed, presumably while she slept. Hood?s fingerprints were found on the note allegedly from Wallace, on both garbage bags that had covered her dead body, on the closet door where her body was found, and on documents that had been taken from Williamson?s safe. Hood?s bloody prints were found on the weight machine placed in front of the closet door.
Hood was scheduled to report to work at 12:30 p.m. that day, but did not show up. He was arrested by police in Indiana the next day. At the time of his arrest, Hood was in possession of several items belonging to Williamson, including his car, jewelry, camera, wallet, credit cards, and clothing. Hood had used Williamson?s credit cards, cashed one of Williamson?s business checks, and pawned several pieces of jewelry shortly after the murders.
At the punishment phase of trial, the jury heard that Hood received juvenile probation for breaking into a school and a gun club when he was twelve or thirteen. When Hood was eighteen, he pled guilty to theft and forgery, and was sentenced to two years in the Indiana Department of Corrections, where he was categorized as a problem inmate. Hood was eventually placed on parole for this conviction, but violated his parole when he absconded to Texas with a fifteen-year-old girl.
When Hood was nineteen he entered the relationship with the fifteen-year-old, against the wishes of her parents. When her mother attempted to end the relationship, Hood became enraged; Hood struck and injured his father who tried to intervene. Hood was hostile towards police officers who responded to a disturbance call regarding this altercation. Hood told the officers that he had hit his father because he did not like anyone touching him, and that he had told his father that if he touched him again he would kill him. Hood threatened to kill anyone who tried to touch him.
Hood and the minor continued to secretly see each other after this incident. Hood was violent and abusive towards the girl, and would not allow her to break things off with him. If the girl refused to have sex with him, Hood would force her. In July 1989, the minor ran away with Hood to Texas. After a few months, she was picked up by the police. As her mother was preparing to leave for Texas to retrieve her, Hood called and threatened to kill the mother if she came.
Hood?s former brother-in-law, Dwayne Matthews, testified that he tried to help Hood get a job in Texas but Hood got fired after two months because he did not want to work. Matthews threw Hood out of his home because Hood would not help pay the bills; when Hood left, he stole some equipment that Matthews used in his construction business. Hood was also fired from a job at a Taco Bell ? after working there for only three days ? for fighting.
Evidence was admitted that, while Hood was living at Williamson?s house, Hood raped another fifteen-year-old girl. Hood called the victim shortly after the attack and told her that if she told anyone or if he ever saw her again he would kill her.
Expert witness, Dr. Walter Quijano opined, based upon a hypothetical question comprised of the facts and evidence of Hood?s case, that there was a probability that the subject of the hypothetical would commit criminal acts of violence in the future and would constitute a continuing threat to society. Dr. Quijano also believed that the subject of the hypothetical suffered from an antisocial personality disorder. Another expert, Dr. Richard Coons, was given the same hypothetical and also opined there was a probability that the subject of the hypothetical would commit criminal acts of violence in the future that would constitute a continuing threat to society. Further, the subject of this hypothetical was very unlikely to be rehabilitated.
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