Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 13, 1992 TAG: 9203130429
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
However, Commonwealth's Attorney Donald Caldwell said Thursday that no decision has been made on whether the death penalty will be sought.
The youth, who is not being identified because of his age, was charged this week with killing 20-year-old Terry Wayne Anderson of Christiansburg during what police say was a drug-related dispute on Lafayette Boulevard in Northwest Roanoke.
It is the first time Roanoke authorities have brought capital murder charges in such a case since the General Assembly expanded the statute in 1990 to include drug-related killings among those that carry a possible death sentence.
Caldwell said his office needs to learn more about the case before considering two potential sentences - life in prison or death in the electric chair.
"Many times the public perception is that when you bring a capital murder charge that is, quote, a death penalty case," he said. "But that's not necessarily the fact."
Bill Geimer, a Washington and Lee University law professor who heads the Virginia Capital Case Clearing House, said Thursday that he is not aware of any death penalties imposed in the state under the new law.
Such a penalty would be unlikely in this case, Geimer said, because of recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions that have prevented the execution of someone who was 15 at the time of the offense.
Although the court has held that a death sentence would be cruel and unusual punishment for a 15-year-old, it has left open that possibility for 16- and 17-year-olds, Geimer said. In Virginia, 15 is the youngest age at which a juvenile can be tried as an adult.
Police have said that Anderson was shot last Friday afternoon while in his pickup truck on the 1000 block of Lafayette.
Neighborhood residents found Anderson slumped inside the truck after it apparently rolled several blocks before hitting a parked car. At Community Hospital, doctors found a bullet wound in Anderson's left armpit.
Police say they found a small amount of crack cocaine in his pickup.
The 15-year-old appeared briefly in Roanoke Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court for an arraignment Thursday morning.
Judge Fred Hoback ordered that he remain in the Coyner Springs Juvenile Detention Home with no bond after Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Ann Gardner cited "the nature of the charge and the threat to the community."
At a hearing scheduled for next month, a judge will be asked to determine if the charge is serious enough - and if the youth's prior record is bad enough - to have the case transfered to Circuit Court for trial as an adult.
The youth also was arraigned Thursday on unrelated charges of trespassing and disorderly conduct relating to an earlier incident. Those offenses allegedly happened at the B&G Grocery - close to the shooting site - after the youth had been ordered away last month, Hoback said.
An employee at B&G, who asked not to be identified, disputed accounts that the shooting happened directly outside the store.
But he acknowledged that there have been problems with young people hanging out in the area and selling drugs. The youth was charged with trespassing after he kept returning to the area after being ordered away.
"We pressed the charges against him and a lot of others, because we're trying to disperse the people who are selling crack," the employee said.
The youth, who wore orange sweat pants and a faded green fatigues jacket to court, spoke little during the hearing - except to say "I love you" in the direction of his mother, seated nearby, as he was led back into custody.
Keywords:
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by CNB