Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 16, 1995 TAG: 9506160050
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium
The jury of eight women and four men spent 81/2 hours over two days deliberating the sentence. On Tuesday, the panel had recommended a 13-year prison term on the rape charge.
Circuit Judge William F. Rutherford set sentencing for Aug. 29.
Barnabei, his parents and his brother showed no emotion when the decision was announced. A deputy stood between Barnabei, 28, and his family.
Moments earlier, Rutherford sternly warned spectators in the packed courtroom against any emotional displays.
On Wednesday, Barnabei interrupted Commonwealth's Attorney Charles Griffith's closing sentencing arguments by pounding his fist on the defense table and shouting that the verdict against him was a mistake.
Defense attorneys James Broccoletti and Dan Shipley met privately with Barnabei's relatives immediately after the jury was released. Jurors, in a note to the judge, said they did not want to talk to the press, and Rutherford kept the courtroom doors locked until they had departed.
Barnabei was accused of killing Sara Wisnosky, a 17-year-old Old Dominion University freshman from Lynchburg. He met and began dating Wisnosky while recruiting members and organizing parties for the campus Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity.
Wisnosky's nude body was found floating in the Lafayette River on Sept. 22, 1993. She had been beaten and strangled.
During a trial that lasted 18 days, prosecutors portrayed Barnabei as a ladies' man who, after becoming intimate with Wisnosky, began to treat her abusively.
Although there was no direct evidence linking Barnabei to the young woman's death, her blood was found on the walls and bed frame of his room in a house near the ODU campus. Wisnosky had left her roommate a note the night before her death saying she planned to stay with Barnabei.
by CNB