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

DATE: FRIDAY, July 20, 1990                   TAG: 9007200683
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B/1   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: RICHMOND                                LENGTH: Medium

SLAYER MEDITATED BEFORE HIS EXECUTION

Head tilted back and eyes closed, Boggs walked slowly into the death chamber at 10:50 p.m. Thursday. He appeared sedated, but state Department of Corrections spokesman Wayne Farrar said Boggs, 27, had not taken any tranquilizers.

"He was meditating," said Farrar. "He was into meditation."

Guards strapped Boggs into the wooden chair in the basement of the state Penitentiary, placed a brown leather mask over his face and attached electrodes to the crown of his head and his right calf.

Comforted by prison chaplain Russ Ford, Boggs, his shaven head still tilted backward, occasionally touched thumb to fingers on his upwardly cupped hands as he waited for his execution, which took place shortly after 11 p.m.

Prison officials said that condemned prisoners are usually not kept waiting in the chair but had no immediate explanation for the delay.

Earlier in the evening, Gov. Douglas Wilder refused to commute Boggs' sentence to life in prison after the U.S. Supreme Court denied a stay.

The 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.

Boggs was sentenced to death for the Jan. 25, 1984, robbery and slaying of his Portsmouth neighbor, Treeby M. Shaw, 87, whom he had known all his life.

She had just poured tea for Boggs when he beat her with a metal bar and stabbed her because he needed money for drugs, he told police. He took diamond rings from her fingers and family silver from the house.

Boggs' back arched as he was hit with the first 2,500-volt surge of electricity. The electricity was administered for 55 seconds, stopped for 5 seconds and turned on for an additional 55 seconds.

Boggs, who had no final words, was pronounced dead at 11:07 p.m.

The execution was the ninth since Virginia resumed executions in 1982 and the 135th nationwide since the Supreme Court reinstituted the death penalty in 1976. It was the 15th this year.

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.

Boggs' attorney, David Bruck, told Williams that Virginia's electric chair is virtually identical to the one in Florida that malfunctioned during the electrocution of Jesse Tafero in May. Flames and smoke appeared from under the man's head covering.

Florida officials contend that the problem with the chair there has been fixed, but defense attorneys are continuing to raise objections to executions in that state.