Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 26, 1995 TAG: 9501260124
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CODY LOWE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: JARRATT LENGTH: Long
Dana Ray Edmonds had to compete against some pretty big names - O.J. Simpson and Bill Clinton - to get any attention Tuesday night.
Probably the only way he could have pulled it off was by dying in a historic way.
Poor, black, intellectually limited, he was destined - even on death row - to be just another number on the state's growing list of executed criminals. Except for one thing: By a quirk of fate, Edmonds had the distinction of being the first to be killed by lethal injection.
Edmonds had my full concentration. I can't tell you how Simpson's case went or what Clinton said. As the president opened his State of the Union address on national television, I was trying to record in my reporter's notebook the garbled near-whisper of Edmonds' last words.
Along with 10 other designated witnesses, I tried to ignore the stifling heat of a tiny glass-enclosed room so I could document and remember the state's first execution by lethal injection.
I took the assignment as a professional responsibility to describe for the citizens of the commonwealth the method by which they are now exacting the ultimate penalty for crime. The experience also demands an examination of its ethical and moral dimensions.
Coming to grips with Edmonds' execution has to begin, of course, with the sickeningly brutal murder of John Elliott, a Danville grocer, back in 1983.
Elliott's head was bashed in with a brick, his mouth gagged and his throat cut. The 62-year-old man was left to bleed to death over a period of several minutes on the floor of his store. Approximately $40 was taken from the cash register.
Though Edmonds first denied the killing and later claimed it was in self defense, the judge who heard the case didn't believe him. He convicted Edmonds, then 21, of capital murder and robbery.
Judge James Ingram determined that the murder was "outrageously vile, horrible and inhuman" and that "the defendant poses a high probability for future dangerousness." Based on those criteria, Ingram sentenced Edmonds to death.
Edmonds already had a record of three felonies - burglaries and grand larceny - and nine misdemeanors, including five assaults.
A man of somewhat limited intelligence - his IQ was reported to be 73 - Edmonds is described as growing up in abject poverty reared by parents who arguably had limited skills for the task.
Though Edmonds might have become a devout Christian in recent years, he certainly was not a choirboy when he took John Elliott from his family and friends. No matter how impoverished or disadvantaged his upbringing, that cannot excuse the murder he committed.
Unfortunately, even murder cases aren't always clear-cut exercises in right and wrong, particularly in a system of jurisprudence that demands a presumption of the innocence of the accused and the consideration of mitigating circumstances.
Those not engaged in the practice of law sometimes rage about technicalities, but the law is a system of technicalities. On the whole, they are what make law just, though technicalities may be applied or pursued in a way that actually perverts justice.
In Edmonds' case, we're talking about dueling technicalities. On the one hand, he argued that his trial lawyer had an unethical and illegal conflict of interest that technically should allow him a new trial. On the other hand, the state argued that - technically, again - it didn't matter whether his rights had been violated, it was too late to raise the issue under Virginia law.
U.S. District Judge James Turk wrestled with those issues. He decided he was barred by law from considering an injustice committed against Edmonds in his defense. Turk also decided that in this case, the conflict likely did not alter the outcome of the case.
But, as Turk pointed out in his opinion denying Edmonds a stay of execution, that is purely speculation.
That wasn't the only ethical problem raised by this case.
The debate begins with the penalty itself. Polls report that significant majorities of Americans - some say as high as four in five - support capital punishment in certain circumstances. Ethical justifications based on biblical injunction, the need to protect the public from deviants who are demonstrated to pose a clear and continuing threat to safety, and an apparently widely felt primal need to seek retribution for harm keep the death penalty in place.
Yet, there is significant opposition as well, and 13 states do not impose the penalty.
Anti-execution activists' argue simply that it is wrong to kill, period. They also contend that executions implicitly send the opposite message of what is intended - that sometimes it's OK to kill.
It is counter-argued that society generally does accept that premise anyway. War, self-defense, sometimes even accident are commonly approved justifications for killing.
There's another more pragmatic consideration to oppose the death penalty, some say. Numerous studies have been published to show that, when one takes into account the tremendous legal costs associated with required and voluntary appeals, it actually costs less to keep a convict in prison for life than to execute him. There is debate over that, however, and no figures have been compiled on costs in Virginia, primarily because of the difficulty in determining actual appeal costs.
The O.J. Simpson trial helps make one ethical dilemma startlingly clear. According to court documents, Edmonds' original court-appointed attorney was paid $1,000 or less for conducting his defense. Any one of O.J. SImpson's numerous lawyers conceivably might bill more than that for a single business lunch.
Of course, the size of the fee doesn't necessarily reflect on the quality of a defendant's representation. Excellent lawyers have been known to take cases for nothing. But such disparities raise ethical concerns. Would additional, more experienced lawyers have been able to elicit a different verdict or sentence for Dana Ray Edmonds? Maybe not, but many people consider it axiomatic that defendants get bigger bang for bigger bucks.
This case also included a religious controversy. Edmonds, believing he has only recently come to a mature understanding of Christian commitment, decided he wanted to be baptized by immersion before his death.
A prison official, concluding that one baptism is enough for anybody, decided that even though there is a baptismal pool available at the Greensville Correctional Center it was unnecessary and logistically inconvenient to allow Edmonds a repeat baptism.
Should it be the role of the state to decide questions of theology for death-row inmates?
The ethical debate continues right into the death chamber.
Lethal injection seems undoubtedly to be a physically less violent way of putting criminals to death than, say, electrocution. The measure actually failed in the legislature several times before passing last year. Previously, the primary argument against it, according to Del. Phillip Hamilton, R-Newport News, was that executions ought to be violent, not a peaceful matter of putting people to sleep before stopping their hearts.
On the other hand, does the perceived ease of death mean juries will be more likely to impose the penalty because they perceive of it as no more ethically challenging than putting the family dog to sleep? No studies yet suggest that, and even some execution opponents doubt it, but a number of observers believe that was a political motivation for its legislative approval.
Another question overheard among witnesses at Edmonds' execution was whether citizens of the state should be required to fulfill execution witness duty just as they have to serve on juries. If citizens were randomly compelled to be in the witness room as a convict died, would fewer juries mete out the sentences?
As Dana Ray Edmonds was strapped to the gurney, his arms were stretched out as if on a cross for a crucifixion - except that he lay on his back.
A prison chaplain pointed out that the position makes it harder for the inmate to die with some shreds of dignity. In the electric chair, before a leather mask is put on, the inmate sits upright and faces the witnesses and prison officials surrounding him. With lethal injection, the condemned must lie down in a position of submission and vulnerability. Even as they say their last words, they can only stare at the white ceiling tiles above them.
It is a little thing, perhaps, but every detail seems important at such a time.
by CNB