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

DATE: TUESDAY, September 7, 1993                   TAG: 9309070064
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: RICHMOND                                LENGTH: Medium

DEATH-ROW COALITION IS BROKE

The Virginia Coalition on Jails and Prisons, a nonprofit organization founded in 1983 to battle capital punishment and fight for the rights of death-row inmates, has closed its doors.

Marie Deans, director of the Richmond-based organization, said it suspended operations last week because of lack of money. Deans said she will spend the next few weeks raising funds in hopes she can reopen the coalition next year. But the odds are against her, she said.

"A lot of things have happened," Deans said. "The economy has constricted. Charities once received a lot of government funding - now they don't, and people are being bombarded with requests. The death penalty is probably the least sexy cause in the U.S."

Since January, Deans has gone without a salary, budgeted at $23,000 last year.

Most of this year's existing $85,000, she said, has gone to travel, research, clemency battles and the salaries of her two aides - her son Robert, 20, and Molly Cupp, 26. Both are applying for graduate school.

Deans, 53, has stayed with 24 men during their last hours. She witnessed one execution. Deans' work has helped save two condemned men, whose sentences were commuted to life in prison.

In February 1991, Gov. Douglas Wilder commuted a sentence from death to life in prison for Joseph Giarratano, who was convicted of murdering a woman and her daughter in their Norfolk apartment. The case drew international attention as Giarratano's lawyers lobbied to prove his innocence.

But in the beginning, it was Deans who fought to get attention for Giarratano.

"If it wasn't for her, I'd be dead," Giarratano said recently. "The Virginia Coalition did the work in my case, recruited attorneys to assist me . . . probably spent $100,000 on my case. She's been my guru, one of my psychiatrists. She's worked with every death-row inmate, their families, the families of a good many of their victims during the past decade."

In January 1992, Wilder also commuted murderer Herbert R. Bassette's death sentence to life in prison without parole. Giarratano said this, too, was the result of efforts by Deans and her coalition.

"For death-row inmates, it means they'll no longer have an advocate to present their cases in the courts and to the governor," Giarratano said.

by CNB