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

DATE: SATURDAY, April 2, 1994                   TAG: 9404020170
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: RICHMOND                                LENGTH: Medium

DEATH-ROW INMATES ASK GOVERNOR TO STUFF THEIR BODIES TO WARN OTHERS

Two death-row inmates have asked Gov. George Allen to let them donate their organs for transplants and have their bodies stuffed and put on public display as a warning against crime.

"Though the stuffing and mounting for public viewing of my body and the body of Michael Williams sounds bizarre and the request of a deranged person, nothing could be further from the truth," Joseph O'Dell III wrote in a letter to Allen this week.

O'Dell was sentenced to die for the 1985 murder of a Virginia Beach woman.

Williams was given the death sentence for the 1993 murders of a Cumberland County couple.

"I suppose it can be looked into," Allen spokesman Ken Stroupe said of the organ donations. He said the request to have the bodies stuffed by a taxidermist was not going to be considered.

Condemned prisoners in Virginia can donate their corneas if they wish.

A spokesman for the state Medical Examiner's Office said that because an autopsy is required by state law, other organs would not be suitable for transplanting.

The General Assembly this year passed a law allowing death by lethal injection. Previously, all executions were carried out in the electric chair.

Whether electrocution or lethal injection renders some or all other organs unusable is not a question that has been considered by the Uniform Network for Organ Sharing, headquartered in Richmond.

"It's a contentious issue," said Wanda Bond, an organ network spokeswoman.

The group's policy states that prisoners are not a group from which it is ethically appropriate to accept organs for transplant to an unrelated recipient.

by CNB