Jailhouse witness George Hall stayed silent about informants fabricating testimony for 30 years because he feared aggravating authorities while on parole.
Where this was said
At 2:06 · chapter starts 1:32
The episode proper begins with reporter Maurice Chammas setting the scene: in fall 2024, David Wood's defense lawyer received a life-changing phone call from a man named George Hall. Hall had been incarcerated with Wood decades earlier and had watched two other prisoners get transported to El Paso, wined and dined by detectives, and shown case files before agreeing to testify that Wood had confessed to murder. Hall knew these men had no real knowledge of Wood's guilt — he would have heard about any confession himself. He wrote to an El Paso prosecutor warning about the fabrication, but the letter went unanswered. Hall said nothing publicly for 30 years, terrified that speaking out would jeopardize his parole. The moment his parole ended in 2024, with Wood's execution looming, he finally came forward. His reason, delivered with quiet power: he couldn't live with himself knowing two people lied to get a man executed and he said nothing. The detective who led the original investigation called Hall's account 'preposterous,' and while the bus trip and interview room visit are documented in court records, the detective couldn't imagine his colleagues orchestrating the kind of joyride Hall described.
The Last 12 Weeks is a 5-part series produced as a collaboration between Serial Productions, The Marshall Project, and The New York Times.
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