Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, December 16, 1994 TAG: 9412160049
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TODD JACKSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The three-judge panel reversed the conviction in October, ruling that a Franklin County judge erred in refusing to strike a potential juror for DeHart's 1992 trial.
But the state attorney general's office asked the court to reconsider its decision, and the panel agreed Wednesday to listen to additional arguments, according to Cliff Hapgood, Franklin County's commonwealth's attorney. Hapgood prosecuted DeHart in 1992.
"We've felt all along that the decision made by the Appeals Court was the wrong one," he said. "This stay doesn't mean they're going to change their mind, but it gives us a chance we didn't think we were going to have."
The Attorney General's Office asked the court to reconsider its reversal based on a similar Virginia Supreme Court decision that had a different finding, said Hapgood, who did not know the specifics of the case.
A new hearing date has not been set.
DeHart's lawyer, Tom Blaylock, could not be reached for comment Thursday.
Blaylock told the panel this past summer that a woman interviewed as a possible juror for DeHart's trial expressed doubt about her ability to be objective.
The woman was accepted into the required pool of 20 possible jurors but later was struck by prosecutors using the first of four disqualifications given to both sides in a jury trial.
The Appeals Court ruled in October that DeHart's rights were violated because there was not a pool of 20 impartial jurors.
The Effie Rakes murder was a highly publicized case in rural Franklin County.
She was found shot to death on the floor of her Shooting Creek home in June 1991. Rakes had raised nine children and still was taking care of an invalid daughter when she was murdered.
The jury that convicted DeHart heard prosecutors recount that Rakes had caught her killer trying to molest her daughter, then 55 years old and unable to talk.
DeHart was sentenced to 27 years in prison for second-degree murder and two unrelated charges.
by CNB