Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, April 18, 1995                   TAG: 9504180125
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH                                LENGTH: Medium

MURDER SUSPECT WON'T PLEAD GUILTY AFTER ALL

Virginia Beach Circuit Judge Edward W. Hanson Jr. said Monday at a hearing for Michael D. Clagett that up to 60 potential jurors may be questioned in an attempt to select a local panel for Clagett's trial, which is to begin June 26.

Commonwealth's Attorney Robert Humphreys said two months ago that Michael D. Clagett, 33, had indicated he would plead guilty to capital murder in the slayings last June of the owner, two employees and a customer at the Witchduck Inn. But when time for the plea came in February, the case was postponed.

Attorneys for Clagett now want Virginia Beach Circuit Judge Edward W. Hanson Jr. to move the trial or have a jury brought in from elsewhere because of publicity about the killings and an admission by Clagett in a television interview that he shot the victims.

Pete Legler, a public defender appointed to represent Clagett, also asked Hanson to bar Humphreys from telling jurors about Clagett's statement in the TV interview that he expected to die for the crimes.

Such a comment would say to the jury that Clagett can ``commit legal suicide,'' Legler said. ``It attempts to short-circuit the entire legal proceeding.''

Humphreys has said he will ask for the death penalty for Clagett.

In arguments Monday on pre-trial motions, Humphreys said courts usually allow confessions and other incriminating statements made by defendants as evidence if the remarks are voluntarily given.

But Hanson, delaying an immediate ruling on Clagett's TV interview, asked the attorneys to research court decisions in other states when defendants say they want to be punished.

Clagett, his long hair tied in a pony tail, appeared at Monday's hearing wearing the bright orange uniform of city jail inmates. He was not asked any questions and didn't say anything.

Late on the night of June 30, a customer went around to a back door of the Witchduck Inn after finding the front door locked. He discovered the bodies of the four victims. The bar owner's 4-year-old son, sleeping in a back office, was unharmed.

The crime was described as one of the worst multiple homicides in Virginia Beach history.

- Associated Press