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

DATE: FRIDAY, September 1, 1995                   TAG: 9509010071
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: JAN VERTEFEUILLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

`HUNTING BUDDY' APPEALS CONVICTION

David Lee Fisher, who was sentenced to death for paying someone to "accidentally" kill his buddy during a Bedford County hunting trip, filed an appeal Thursday in U.S. District Court seeking a new trial.

In 1987, Fisher was the first person to be convicted of capital murder by a Bedford County jury. He was convicted in the death of 18-year-old David Wilkey.

Fisher had taken out a $100,000 life insurance policy on Wilkey a month before Wilkey was shot while hunting with him and Bobby Mulligan.

Mulligan later confessed to killing the 18-year-old North Carolina man for a share of the insurance money.

Fisher always has denied the murder-for-hire and contended Wilkey died in a hunting accident, which Bedford County authorities initially believed. Mulligan alleged that after he shot Wilkey, Fisher tried to stick his hand into the wound to stop Wilkey's heart.

Fisher has unsuccessfully appealed to the Virginia Supreme Court, the U.S. Supreme Court and Bedford County Circuit Court.

In a document more than 250 pages long, Fisher's attorneys argue he deserves a new trial because of ineffective assistance of counsel, mistakes by the prosecutor, improprieties by the court, prejudiced jurors and improper jury instructions, among other grounds.

They also call Virginia's murder-for-hire statute and the use of future dangerousness as a criterion for imposing the death penalty unconstitutional.

by CNB