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

DATE: FRIDAY, June 8, 1990                   TAG: 9006080868
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-3   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: RICHMOND                                LENGTH: Medium

COURT VOIDS DEATH PENALTY IN SLAYING

A divided Virginia Supreme Court today threw out the death penalty given to a man for the murder of a McLean restaurant owner because it was unclear whether the defendant was the trigger man.

The court ordered that Dung Quang Cheng be tried again on a charge no greater than first-degree murder, which carries a maximum term of life in prison. His convictions on related charges were upheld.

The high court affirmed a fourth capital murder conviction of another death row inmate, Timothy W. Spencer, who was convicted of a series of slayings in Richmond and Northern Virginia.

In the Cheng case, the court said the evidence showed that Cheng masterminded the abduction, robbery and shooting of Hsiang Liu, a co-owner of the Grand Garden restaurant. Liu's body was found in his car at the entrance to an Arlington County park on Sept. 5, 1988.

Cheng confessed his involvement in the crime to an Arlington County sheriff's deputy he knew, but the deputy never asked Cheng whether he fired the fatal shots.

The deputy testified that Cheng told him "there's a man who put the contract on him and they had to get rid of him." Under cross-examination, the deputy said Cheng "told me that he had to do it."

The court said the jury should not have inferred from the unrecorded conversation that Cheng was the trigger man.

"The evidence, at most, creates a strong suspicion that Cheng was the `trigger man,"' said the opinion written by Justice Roscoe B. Stephenson Jr. "However, suspicion of guilt, no matter how strong, is insufficient to sustain a criminal conviction."

Under Virginia law, only the person who committed the murder can be convicted of capital murder unless the case involves a murder for hire.

Justice A. Christian Compton dissented in an opinion that was joined by Chief Justice Harry L. Carrico and Justice Leroy R. Hassell.

Compton said the evidence on appeal should be viewed in a light most favorable to the prosecution.

"Given the prior connections between the victim and the defendant, and the other circumstantial evidence pointing unerringly to the defendant as the perpetrator of the capital murder, I submit that the evidence is wholly sufficient to support the conviction," Compton wrote.

by CNB