Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 8, 1990 TAG: 9003081698
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: RENO, NEV. LENGTH: Medium
"All Tracy and I have is love and time. We are running out of time," Lisa Petrocelli said in a statement after the lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court. "I want to have this baby and I do not think God would think it is wrong to bring a new baby into the world."
Her husband, Tracy Petrocelli, 38, was sentenced to death in 1982 for fatally shooting a Reno car dealer while on a test drive. He also was sentenced to life in prison for killing an ex-girlfriend in a Seattle restaurant in 1981.
"Just because her husband has committed a crime and is on death row paying for it doesn't mean his would-be children should suffer," Robert Dulin, a paralegal working on the case with Lisa Petrocelli's attorney, said Wednesday. "She just wants to have his baby to carry on his name."
Glen Whorton, spokesman for the Nevada prison system, said the department has no intention of allowing conjugal visits, which cause security problems and would require setting up facilities and supervision.
"We're not planning on developing any kind of artificial insemination program either," he said, adding that no other inmate had made such a request.
The Petrocellis were married Dec. 6, 1988, at the Nevada State Prison in Carson City, 30 miles from Reno. They began corresponding after an inmate at a Las Vegas jail, where she worked as a nurse, put them in touch.
They filed a federal lawsuit against the state last October because prison authorities barred her from visiting her husband after drug-sniffing dogs at the prison zeroed in on her car trunk and her purse. No drugs were found.
That suit is pending and Tracy Petrocelli has since been transferred to the state's newest maximum-security prison, in Ely, about 300 miles to the east.
His 26-year-old wife, who lives in Reno, declined to be interviewed but released a statement through her attorneys.
"My husband Tracy and I want to have a child together," she said. "I would like to visit my husband in private so that we can conceive a child the way God intended. If I'm not granted my wish to be a real wife to my husband I want to have his baby by artificial insemination.
"My husband is being punished, but that does not make it right to punish me and my baby."
Tracy Petrocelli has exhausted his state appeals and is pleading his case in the federal court system, said Dulin. At Petrocelli's trial, he said the car dealer was accidentally killed during a struggle as they argued over the car's price.
by CNB