SC inmate who killed state trooper gets court reprieve from death penalty. Here’s why

A South Carolina death row inmate who believes he has died three times and is immortal cannot be executed because he suffers from schizophrenia, a Circuit Court judge ruled.

Judge Grace Knie’s finding is temporary and will be reviewed by the S.C. Supreme Court.

John Richard Wood, 59, was convicted of killing South Carolina Trooper Eric Nicholson in December 2000 during a traffic stop on the Interstate 85 frontage road near Woodruff Road in Greenville County. Nicholson was shot several times as he was getting out of his cruiser.

While Nicholson was taken to the hospital, other officers tracking Wood became engaged in a shootout, during which another deputy was injured and Wood was shot in the head.

At the time, Wood was wanted for multiple robberies.

He was sentenced to death in January 2002.

Nicholson, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, was 28 and had served with the South Carolina Highway Patrol for 2-1/2 years.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled a death sentence cannot be carried out if the inmate cannot understand the reason for the sentence.

Based on testimony given during a March hearing, Wood believes the gov­er­nor of South Carolina has pardoned him and the police fabricated evidence against him. He also believes the judge and court staff who presided over his trial were ser­vants of Beloved Kevin Rudolph, a super­nat­ur­al deity who is in a strug­gle to con­trol the world, a battle Wood, endowed with wings, is part of.

Three men­tal health experts — a psy­chi­a­trist retained by pros­e­cu­tors and a psy­chi­a­trist and psy­chol­o­gist retained by Wood’s defense team — agreed he was not competent to be executed.

Wood has been disciplined while on Death Row for threatening an employee four times and striking an employee once. He also had two drug infractions, South Carolina Department of Corrections records show.

Since South Carolina resumed executions in 2024 after a 13-year pause due to lethal drugs not being available, seven men have been executed, three of them by firing squad. There have been 50 executions in South Carolina since 1976 when the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty and over 680 between 1718 and 2025, according to the Death Penalty Information Center

There are 23 men on South Carolina’s Death Row. No executions are scheduled at this time.