Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, July 20, 1990 TAG: 9007200543
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
Boggs was led into the death chamber at the State Penitentiary in downtown Richmond at 10:53, strapped into the electric chair and administered two 55-second surges of 2,500 volts each. He was pronounced dead at 11:07 by Dr. Balvir L. Kapil, a physician for the Department of Corrections.
Boggs had no last words, said Corrections Department spokesman Wayne Farrar.
Boggs spent his final hours in his cell with two prison chaplains, said the Rev. A.C. Epps, chief chaplain at the prison.
"He's been exercising, doing stretching exercises," Epps said.
Asked if Boggs held any hope of a stay of execution being granted, Epps said: "No, he is quite resigned to this."
U.S. District Judge Richard L. Williams turned down Boggs' request for a stay of execution Thursday morning, and a three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ruling late in the afternoon.
Defense lawyers claimed the state's electric chair might malfunction and that Boggs suffers from brain damage.
Their last legal hope rested with the U.S. Supreme Court, which denied an application for a stay of execution at 8:45 p.m. The vote was 7-2, with the lone dissenters Justices William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall, who oppose the death penalty in all cases.
Gov. Douglas Wilder refused to commute Boggs' sentence to life in prison. Laura Dillard, the governor's press secretary, said Wilder would make no comment unless he decided to commute the sentence.
Boggs' execution was the first during the 6-month-old administration of Wilder, a former death penalty opponent who successfully pushed for an expansion of the state's capital punishment law this year.
About 30 death penalty proponents and an equal number of opponents marched and carried signs near the sprawling prison as the execution approached.
"I came because we need to offer public witness that killing is wrong," said Tim Lietzke, who opposes the death penalty. "We shouldn't allow it to happen in silence."
Rocky Sapp and other death penalty supporters were on the other side of the street outside the prison.
"Look at the crime rate," Sapp said. "Look at the murders just here in Richmond. We need a deterrent. It costs taxpayers millions of dollars to keep these guys on death row. I wish there would be more people out here. We need to let them know we should execute more people."
The execution was the ninth since Virginia reinstituted the death penalty in 1977 and the 135th nationwide since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed states to resume executions in 1976.
Boggs, 27, had a contact visit with his mother, father, sister and brother Thursday afternoon, said Deborah E. Groome, acting operations officer at the State Penitentiary, where the electric chair is located.
Boggs also visited with two ministers and had raisin bagels and coffee for his final meal, she said.
"He slept late this morning and has been talking on the phone," Groome said. "He's not overly excited and doesn't seem to be depressed."
Boggs was sentenced to death for the Jan. 25, 1984 robbery and slaying of his Portsmouth neighbor, Treeby M. Shaw, 87. She had just poured tea for Boggs when he beat her with a metal bar and stabbed her. Boggs told police he killed the widow he had known all his life because he needed money for drugs. He took diamond rings from her fingers and family silver from the house.
He was charged with the murder after police found the silver in the trunk ofBogg's car when he was arrested Feb. 17 for killing a mqan in a hit-and-run accident. Boggs was convicted of first-degree murder for that crime and was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Boggs' attorney, David Bruck, told Williams that Virginia's electric chair is virtually identical to the one in Florida that had to be switched on three times before it electrocuted murderer Jesse Tafero in May. Flames and smoke appeared from under the man's head covering.
"A horrible fiasco is foreseeable in this case," Bruck said.
But Robert Anderson, an assistant state attorney general, said the chair had been thoroughly checked.
by CNB