Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, September 15, 1993 TAG: 9309150213
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: JARRATT LENGTH: Medium
Wise, 31, was pronounced dead at 11:12 p.m., said Wayne Brown, operations officer at the Greensville Correctional Center, where the state's electric chair is housed.
Clergy and family members visited Wise on his final day, Brown said.
Wise also spoke by telephone four times with Bernie and Helen Wright of Richmond, who said they met the condemned man through a prison ministry.
"We've been praying with him all day," Helen Wright said. "He's ready to go home. He's better than we are."
Wise was sentenced to death for robbing and killing William Ricketson, a building and grounds employee at the Mecklenburg Correctional Center, in 1983.
Ricketson, 43, was found covered with dirt and cinder blocks in a shallow privy hole in Mecklenburg County. An autopsy showed he had drowned but also had been beaten and shot in the eye and chest. Wise was arrested that day as he was putting oil in Ricketson's pickup truck. He admitted involvement in the crime.
After exhausting his appeals, Wise sought clemency from Gov. Douglas Wilder, saying his trial attorney and two other lawyers appointed to represent him on appeal had failed to properly handle his case. Wilder last week rejected Wise's request, saying he saw no information that would prompt him to intervene.
As Wise's execution approached, 18 people gathered outside the prison. Some carried candles and prayed. Others, like David and Patricia Gregory of Richmond, said they had come in search of a sense of finality. Patricia Gregory was Ricketson's sister-in-law.
"It's like you get on with life," she said. "You start getting over it, and then there's another appeal or another article. We're not here to celebrate. We're just here to see justice."
Memo: shorter version ran in the Metro edition.