Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 17, 1991 TAG: 9102170103
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: WARREN FISKE LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Long
But Wilder refused to halt three executions during his first year in office. And this week, as he faces the lonely decision of whether to spare convicted killer Joseph Giarratano, many of his old critics are questioning whether he's gone overboard in enforcing capital punishment.
"Frankly, my personal feeling is that there are ample reasons to seriously consider a pardon to Joe Giarratano," said Joseph Elton, executive director of the Republican Party of Virginia. "My fear is that the governor will base his decision on political concerns rather than compassion."
In the 13 months of the Wilder administration, no issue has come close to attracting the national and international attention now focused on Giarratano, a former Norfolk waterman who pleaded guilty to the 1979 rape and strangling of a 15-year-old girl and the stabbing death of her mother.
Giarratano's attorneys claim his several confessions were incoherent, contradictory and the product of a drug addiction. They argue that physical evidence not discovered until after the trial would clear Giarratano.
Of late, Wilder's office has been besieged by more than 500 letters a day supporting clemency, including correspondence from a long list of prominent actors, politicians and journalists. By midday Friday, the governor had received 5,475 letters urging him to spare Giarratano and only 61 asking that the death sentence be carried out.
"We've never seen anything like this," said press secretary Laura Dillard. She has had to turn down several friends who have asked her to approach the governor on Giarratano's behalf, she said.
Not wanting to add to the sensation, Wilder has declined all requests for interviews about Giarratano, and some of his closest aides say the governor has not indicated his intentions. They say Wilder is pondering three alternatives: carrying out the execution; commuting the sentence to life in prison; or granting a conditional pardon that would allow Giarratano to have a new trial.
No Virginia governor has stopped an execution since the death penalty was reinstituted in 1982. Although Wilder faces a difficult choice, some political scientists say his ultimate decision on Giarratano will not imperil his presumed ambition to run for president.
"On the one hand, I know of no politician who has ever been punished for allowing an execution to take place," said Robert Holsworth of Virginia Commonwealth University, who added that polls have shown roughly 75 percent of voters in Virginia and across the nation favor capital punishment.
Many of those arguing most aggressively for Giarratano are Democratic liberals who oppose capital punishment. As a black candidate, Wilder might expect those people to be part of his political base, and clemency for Giarratano could help cement their support.
"On the other hand, the high degree of conservative support for Giarratano [also] ensures that Wilder would not be accused to being soft on crime if he does not go ahead with the execution," Holsworth said.
Wilder detests any implication that his decision will be politically motivated. One of the few times he has criticized the media came last fall, when a broadcast report speculated that the governor was politically motivated in allowing an execution to occur.
"That really burned me up because I had nothing to do with any of the circumstances that placed that man on death row," Wilder said at the time.
Even so, many believe Wilder's views on the death penalty have changed with the political winds. During much of his 15-year career in the state Senate, Wilder was a constant and often lonely voice against capital punishment. He became a staunch death penalty proponent in 1985, when he ran for lieutenant governor.
Citing the switch, Republicans during the 1989 gubernatorial campaign repeatedly criticized Wilder for being weak on capital punishment and predicted that he would not carry out executions.
Now, some Republicans suggest Wilder has become too bullish on the death penalty in order to improve his conservative credentials. "The governor has proved that he's not a bleeding-heart liberal," said Richard Viguerie, a GOP national fund-raiser. "Now we need to see if he has compassion."
Two executions on Wilder's watch attracted little controversy. But the third, that of Wilbert Lee Evans last November, drew a considerable outcry for leniency.
Evans was condemned for murdering an Alexandria sheriff. Wilder was unmoved by evidence that Evans later helped save the lives of guards and nurses taken hostage during a 1984 escape by other death row inmates at Mecklenburg Correctional Center.
Elton and State Republican Chairman Donald Huffman wrote a letter asking Wilder to spare Evans, effectively offering to shield him from any political criticism that otherwise might accompany clemency.
Political observers found mixed signals in Evans' execution. Some saw it as a sign that Wilder is unwilling to stop executions. Others suggested privately that it may be politically possible for Wilder to stop one execution during his term and that he has been waiting for Giarratano.
Wilder dismisses such speculation as crass. He has described his life-and-death decisions as "agonizing" and said he considers each case on its merits.
"I know that either way it goes, I'll be accused of playing politics," he said recently. "But with a life at stake, you can't play politics. It can come back to haunt you.
"I still don't regard myself as an advocate of capital punishment," Wilder added. "I would say that I am no longer an opponent of it."
To spare Giarratano any uncertainty, sources said Wilder hopes to make a decision and announce it quickly. The governor came under criticism for letting one execution proceed without any comment; the condemned man went to the death chamber still hoping Wilder might intercede.
Among those contemplating the politics of the death penalty is Giarratano himself. "I'd be naive to think politics didn't play a role in this," he said during an interview last week at the State Penitentiary in Richmond.
But like many who are less affected by Wilder's decision, Giarratano said the governor would lose nothing by granting a retrial. "If I'm found guilty and given a death sentence again, [Wilder's] tough but fair," he said. "If I'm acquitted, he's saved an innocent man."
by CNB