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

DATE: FRIDAY, February 15, 1991                   TAG: 9102150269
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: HARTFORD, CONN.                                LENGTH: Medium

YALE LAW JOURNAL TO FEATURE GIARRATANO PLEA FOR JUSTICE

Joseph Giarratano, one of the authors, is to die in Virginia's electric chair on Feb. 22 - a few days before his essay is to appear in the February issue.

Giarratano, who has been on death row since his conviction for the 1979 rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl, wrote a scholarly article denouncing what he sees as an attempt by the courts to curb the rights of condemned inmates to appeal their convictions.

Mumia Abu-Jamal, who has been on death row in Pennsylvania since 1982 for killing a police officer, is appealing his conviction.

Jamal chose a more gritty approach, graphically describing day-to-day life on death row.

The two essays mark the first time the 100-year-old Yale journal has published the works of convicted felons.

"There are one million Americans in jail and 2,400 Americans on death row that are not heard from in law journals, and we thought they might have something to contribute to the dialogue," said Robert Gulack, one of the student editors who solicited the essays.

Giarratano says he doesn't remember raping or stabbing 15-year-old Michelle Kline and her 44-year-old mother, Barbara Kline, in February 1979, in the victims' Norfolk, Va., apartment.

He was a 21-year-old, high school dropout and drug addict working on a scallop boat at the time of the murders.

"Has our criminal justice system become so infallible as to rule out the possibility of serious error?" Giarratano wrote in his detailed, seven-page article.

"Have we outgrown the need for our traditional constitutional safeguards? Or is it possible that some of those we seek to execute are, in fact, innocent?" he wrote.

Supporters as diverse as conservative columnist James J. Kilpatrick, folk singer Joan Baez and Amnesty International are calling for a new trial, saying there is doubt about Giarratano's guilt.

He will die in Virginia's electric chair next Friday unless Virginia Gov. Douglas Wilder grants his request for a conditional pardon. Wilder has said he has received nearly 3,700 letters, most urging clemency.