Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 21, 1992 TAG: 9202210405
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BEDFORD LENGTH: Medium
SAVINO WANTS NEW TRIAL
When Joseph John Savino pleaded guilty to capital murder, he blamed only himself.Nearly three years later, Savino now blames his attorneys.
Savino - who once was so eager to have his death sentence imposed that he refused appeals and asked for his electrocution to be televised - has since changed his mind and is seeking a new trial.
In a hearing Thursday in Bedford County Circuit Court, Savino claimed that his lawyers were ineffective during a 1989 case in which he pleaded guilty to beating, stabbing and robbing his homosexual lover, Thos "Tom" McWaters, at a country estate they shared.
When the hearing on his habeas petition continues today, Savino will be requesting a new trial from the same man who ordered him to die - Judge William Sweeney.
Savino, 32, testified Thursday that his lawyers, Hugh Jones and Grady Donaldson of Lynchburg, led him to believe that Sweeney would not choose the more severe of the life-or-death sentencing options.
"They didn't think it was possible," he testified.
Under questioning from his attorney, Gerald T. Zerkin of Richmond, Savino also said he would not have pleaded guilty had his attorneys told him of his chances for conviction of a lesser charge, or if they had given him hope that a confession he made might have been suppressed.
Savino said he decided to plead guilty at the time because he "just didn't care" and wanted to put the case behind him. He also said he did not want to face a prolonged trial with "cameras in the courtroom; kamikaze reporters on the front row."
But under cross-examination by Assistant Attorney General Eugene Murphy, Savino admitted that he told Jones and Donaldson that his confession was the truth, and that he wanted to plead guilty.
Jones, who spent hundreds of hours preparing for the case, testified that Savino insisted on pleading guilty from the first time he met him, shortly after he was assigned to represent him.
"I never recommended that he plead guilty," Jones said.
But Zerkin suggested in his questions to Jones that the attorneys could have done a better job in seeking to have their client's confession thrown out, and in challenging the robbery aspect of the capital case.
Savino testified that at the time of the Nov. 29, 1989 killing, he had been injecting large amounts of cocaine and when he was questioned by police, he was still suffering depression and other symptoms of "crashing from coke."
He admitted then that he beat the 64-year-old man with a hammer and stabbed him repeatedly with two butcher knives because he was strung out on cocaine and became tired of McWaters' repeated demands for sex.
The next day, McWaters' body was discovered in an upstairs bedroom of "Balmoor," a stately country home they shared south of Bedford.