Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 8, 1990 TAG: 9007080201
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: BILL BYRD LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Long
Then, with his date with the electric chair just days away, Savino changed his mind. After a meeting with his family and anti-death-penalty activists, he decided to file an appeal - which even if unsuccessful could keep him alive as long as a decade.
Savino "If all these people are willing to fight, I should and will do my part," the former Bedford County resident said in a defiant statement from the State Penitentiary.
Savino will likely have a long time to vent his fury at the judicial system. Despite massive public support for capital punishment, despite politicians' frenzied efforts to endorse the penalty, despite the U.S. Supreme Court's obvious hostility to condemned murderers, legal experts have reached a consensus:
In Virginia and nationwide, the death penalty remains little more than words in a law book. And though judges and politicians are making increasingly vehement calls for reform, anything more than a token increase in executions is unlikely.
"I see nothing, at this point, that would accelerate the process in the immediate future," Bert Rohrer, a spokesman for Attorney General Mary Sue Terry, said last week.
With more than 2,000 inmates condemned to death in the United States, constitutional law experts and law enforcement officials expect some executions to continue.
Richard Boggs, a convicted murderer from Portsmouth, is scheduled to die in Virginia's electric chair this month, for example. But 14 years after the U.S. Supreme Court gave its blessings to the death penalty in a landmark July 1976 decision, experts cite a variety of reasons for the dearth of executions:
Inmates have available a seemingly interminable appeals process, featuring multiple reviews by a variety of state and federal appellate courts. Savino, for example, will have at least two chances to have his case reviewed by the Virginia Supreme Court and could make at least three appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Appeals can keep condemned prisoners alive for as long as 13 years, state lawyers said last week. The eight men executed in Virginia since the high bench ruling averaged eight years on death row, the lawyers said.
Repeated appeals have kept Charles Sylvester Stamper, a convicted murderer from Henrico County, and Joseph Giarratano, sentenced to death for a Norfolk killing, on death row since 1979. Buddy Earl Justus, condemned for a Montgomery County killing, and Herbert Bassett, sentenced to die for a robbery-murder in Henrico County, have been there for a decade. Edward Fitzgerald has been a resident since 1981, when a jury sentenced him to die for raping and torturing to death a Chesterfield County woman.
Although the courts have been "moving [the cases] along more expeditiously" of late, the process still takes years, said Jerry Slonaker, an assistant state attorney general who handles death penalty litigation.
Some anti-death penalty groups have estimated the cost of putting someone to death at more than $1 million.
The sentence is applied unevenly within Virginia. Not one of the state's 45 death row inmates is from Fairfax County, by far the state's most populous jurisdiction. Just two men were condemned in Richmond, often dubbed Virginia's "murder capital" with up to 100 homicides a year.
On the other hand, four Virginia Beach murderers have been condemned in recent years, and conservative localities in Virginia's Southside are responsible for 10 death row occupants. Of 46 pending death sentences, 15 were imposed in Hampton Roads, and just six were handed down in Northern Virginia.
Despite the penalty's overwhelming popularity, jurors and judges in many areas appear squeamish about sending a person to the electric chair. Although prosecutors in Norfolk have repeatedly requested death sentences, just one person has been condemned in the city since the 1976 high court ruling.
Although most state legislators are vocal death penalty supporters, the assembly has been reluctant to expand the scope of the capital punishment law. Virginia's statute remains far narrower than laws in states such as Florida and Texas, which allow almost any murderer to be put to death.
Finally, appellate court judges at all levels continue to give intense scrutiny to death cases. Often the scrutiny results in confusing signals. For example, the U.S. Supreme Court - although dominated by conservatives - threw out a key portion of North Carolina's death statute this year, revoking sentences of dozens of prisoners.
"Death is different in the eyes of the justices, even the conservatives," said A.E. "Dick" Howard, a constitutional law expert at the University of Virginia. "Death has a finality that no other justice does."
Even so, Chief Justice William Rehnquist has led the fight for federal rules limiting condemned prisoners' appeal rights. An appeal limitation bill is now being debated in the U.S. Senate, but law experts say the measure is unwieldy and may not be effective.
"It's a Christmas tree with so many ornaments that it's not satisfactory to anybody," said William Felton Jr., a law professor at the College of William and Mary. "You've got ornaments that both sides just hate. I'm not sure there's going to be any bill."
Death penalty opponents insist that long delays serve justice. Though 132 people have been executed nationally since 1977, 40 percent of all death sentences have been overturned on appeal, said Stephen Bright, director of the Southern Prisoners Defense Committee in Atlanta. Defendants often are poor, inadequately represented in court and the object of hysterical "show trials" run by publicity-hungry prosecutors, Bright contended.
"Prosecutors don't run from" seeking the penalty in particularly heinous cases that generate much public outrage, agreed Sen. Dudley Emick, D-Botetourt, a senior member of the Senate Courts of Justice Committee. In many other cases, however, commonwealth's attorneys don't push for the death sentence "because of the time, resources and appeals never ending," he said.
Prosecutors offer a different view. "I'd put abuse" by defense lawyers at the top of the list of reasons for delay, Norfolk Commonwealth's Attorney William Rutherford said. Lawyers take "the maximum amount of time" to file claims and make frivolous arguments, Rutherford said.
Finally, prosecutors say there's no guarantee a judge or jury will impose the death sentence when it's sought. Rutherford said he's sought the death penalty "in the ballpark of three times a year" since becoming Norfolk's commonwealth's attorney in 1985. Yet Giarratano - sentenced 11 years ago - is the only Norfolk resident on death row.
Many defendants avoid the electric chair by pleading guilty and throwing themselves on the mercy of the court, Rutherford said. Many lawyers think judges are less likely to impose the sentence than juries, he noted.
With all the roadblocks, few observers on either side of the issue expect the pace of executions to accelerate much, in Virginia or anywhere else in the country. A flood of deaths would ensure a quick end to capital punishment, Bright argued. The public, he said, would be repulsed by the killings.
Other observers, however, aren't so sure. "We as a society want to kill when we see life taken by a predatory individual," William and Mary's Felton said. "We can't settle our emotions on the issue."
by CNB