Wood pleas to battery with intent

A Carson City man once convicted for orchestrating his former wife's murder will plead guilty to lesser charges following the Nevada Supreme Court's decision in December to reverse his conviction.

As part of a plea bargain, 36-year-old Allen Dwight Wood agreed to admit to a charge of battery with intent to commit murder. In 1997, Wood was convicted in a jury trial of attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder and soliciting murder.

Prosecutors believe Wood intended for his former wife, Lisa Wood, to die when he commissioned Brian Bardin and Justin Anderson, both 15 at the time, to enter her residence with a knife and cut her throat. She awoke with a long gash in her neck and was treated at Carson-Tahoe Hospital.

Wood's previous conviction was reversed by the state's highest court when it determined that second-hand statements made between Bardin and a classmate should not have been used as evidence in the trial.

Wood will serve between two and 20 years if sentenced on the new charge. He has already served three years of a 13- to 33-year sentence handed down in Judge Michael Griffin's courtroom in 1997.

Anderson spent no time in jail for his part in the murder while Bardin served two years of a five-year sentence. He is out on parole.