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

DATE: SATURDAY, January 14, 1995                   TAG: 9501160070
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: RICHMOND                                LENGTH: Short

NO WORKER'S COMP FOR INMATE, COURT RULES

The decision reversed a Virginia Court of Appeals ruling that the Worker's Compensation Commission erred in denying benefits to convicted felon James M. Woodward.

The Supreme Court also upheld the capital murder convictions of Kenneth L. Wilson of Newport News, who killed his next-door neighbor after tying up and tormenting her daughter and a friend; Jason M. Joseph, who killed a man during the robbery of a Portsmouth sandwich shop; and Thomas D. Strickler, who killed James Madison University student Leanne Whitlock.

The Supreme Court said the worker's compensation case ``involves a matter of significant precedential value.'' Woodward should not receive benefits, the court ruled, because he was a ward of the state and was not at liberty to contract for personal services.

Woodward was injured while trimming trees along a Warren County highway in 1990. He was earning 27 cents an hour working on a 10-man ``gun gang'' under supervision of the state Department of Transportation and guarded by an armed correctional officer.

The intermediate appeals court said Woodward's working arrangement ``contained all the elements of a contract.'' The Supreme Court disagreed.

``The pivotal question ... becomes whether prisoners in Virginia, who are not on a work-release program, are capable of making a true contract of hire with the commonwealth or any of its agencies,'' the court wrote. ``We answer that query in the negative.''