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

DATE: TUESDAY, August 29, 1995                   TAG: 9508290039
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: DAVID M. POOLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND                                LENGTH: Medium

CORRECTIONS CHIEF ANGELONE HAS SOME FIGHTING WORDS FOR PRISONS SUBCOMMITTEE

Angelone released a 22-page document that he said should answer a General Assembly panel's questions about management and security during his 11/2-year tenure.

He also said some of the panel's concerns were bunk, like the accusation that his department squandered $5,400 for a job fair for potential employees at Greensville Correctional Center.

The event was a success, he said, generating nearly 500 job applications for a prison plagued by high employee turnover. "Anyone who would like to come forward and say it was [a waste of money], I'd like to talk with them," he said in a tone that suggested he would take such a conversation out back.

Jerry Kilgore, public safety secretary under Gov. George Allen, said he hoped the report would put an end to the election-year inquiry into the Department of Corrections.

"If we continue down this road, it looks exactly like it looked in the beginning: a political witch hunt," Kilgore said.

The head of a House of Delegates subcommittee charged with prison oversight said Monday afternoon that he had not read the full report, which was faxed to him five minutes before Angelone and Kilgore held a joint Richmond news conference.

Del. Glenn Croshaw, D-Virginia Beach, said at first glance the report appeared to be a "whitewash" similar to Angelone's 36-hour investigation this summer of a gun discovered in the typewriter of inmate Willie Lloyd Turner after he was executed. State police recently completed a 21/2-month investigation and concluded that there was "clear evidence" that Turner had the gun on death row. The state police hedged their conclusion, though, because DNA found on the typewriter matched not just Turner's, but a second, unknown, person's.

"We're not going to engage in a 24-hour, a 48-hour or a 72-hour whitewash of anything," Croshaw said. "We are charged with the oversight of prisons, and we're going to do it in a deliberative and thoughtful way."