Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 23, 1992 TAG: 9201230171
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG SCHNEIDER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
ONLY HOPE LEFT FOR INMATE IS CLEMENCY
Though lawyers say they have disturbing evidence that Herbert R. Bassette could be innocent of the 1979 murder that is scheduled to send him to the electric chair tonight at 11, every court they've tried has refused to hear it.Now the 47-year-old Richmond painter's last hope is clemency from Gov. Douglas Wilder.
Bassette's attorneys didn't even try their last two courtroom routes - the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court. "We've determined it would be futile to do so," said Douglas W. Davis, one of the lawyers.
In Bassette's case, state and federal courts have refused to hear the new evidence because, they ruled, it should have been brought forward sooner.
The case against Bassette for the robbery and murder of Albert Burwell Jr., a 16-year-old Richmond gas station attendant, has not been flawless. Police originally arrested another man who allegedly confessed to the crime, and the first attempt to prosecute Bassette ended in a hung jury.
The only link between Bassette and Burwell was the word of three other people who took part in the crime. Davis claims that Bassette would be the only man executed in Virginia this century whose conviction was based solely on the testimony of accomplices.
Now Bassette's lawyers claim two fundamental developments:
A friend of Bassette's, George Johnson, all but confessed to the crime in an interview with attorneys. Johnson almost came forward to police, according to court documents, but balked because he feared it would ruin his life and might not save Bassette's.
A woman who testified in the Burwell trial that a man named Tyrone Jackson was lying and bragging when he confessed to the murder now says she believed Jackson was the killer, and that prosecutors told her to say otherwise. Bassette's attorneys even found the transcript of a police interview with the woman four days after the murder in which she insisted Jackson was telling the truth and had shot someone before. Bassette's attorneys say that statement was withheld from the defense in the first two trials.
Wilder's office declined to comment on the case Wednesday night.
Bassette's scheduled execution comes as death-penalty supporters have renewed their bid to replace electrocution as too primitive a way to put the condemned to death. A bill in the House of Delegates would give judges the choice of ordering a prisoner's death by the electric chair or by lethal injection.