HUNTSVILLE, Texas -- A condemned 44-year-old inmate is hoping the U.S. Supreme Court keeps him from the Texas death chamber for the fatal slashing of an 11-year-old girl. Bobby Wayne Woods is set for lethal injection Thursday evening in Huntsville for the April 1997 abduction, rape and slaying of Sarah Patterson, his ex-girlfriend’s daughter. The girl and her 9-year-old brother were snatched from their home in Granbury, near Fort Worth. Her brother was beaten and left for dead but survived to testify against Woods. Woods’ lawyers argue that he should be spared because of a Supreme Court ban on executing mentally impaired people. They also contend earlier unsuccessful appeals in Woods’ case were the result of shoddy work by an attorney now barred from taking on appeals for Texas death row inmates.
