Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, October 31, 1995 TAG: 9510310111
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
The justices, voting unanimously, ruled that Tuggle's death sentence was wrongly upheld by the Virginia Supreme Court and a federal appeals court without proper consideration of what role the sentencing errors played.
Tuggle was convicted of capital murder for the 1983 rape and killing of Jessie Geneva Havens in Smyth County. The crime occurred four months after Tuggle's parole for the 1971 murder of a 17-year-old girl.
Tuggle was one of six death row inmates who staged the largest jailbreak in U.S. history when they posed as security guards and escaped from the Mecklenburg Correctional Center in 1984. All six were recaptured within a month, and the other five since have been executed.
The justices said a lower court must decide whether Tuggle's death sentence ``might be sustained or reimposed'' or needs to be set aside in favor of a new sentencing trial. The case was sent back to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which may rule on it or send it back to the Virginia Supreme Court.
The U.S. Supreme Court never required oral arguments in the case, which shows how flawed the rulings of two lower courts were, said Tuggle's attorney, Timothy Kaine.
Mark Miner, a spokesman for Attorney General Jim Gilmore, said the office is ``disappointed by the Supreme Court's argument'' and will continue to pursue the case.
While awaiting trial, Tuggle was interviewed by a state psychologist. After Tuggle's conviction, the psychologist testified at his sentencing hearing about Tuggle's ``high probability of future dangerousness.''
That factor was one of two ``aggravating circumstances'' the sentencing jury used to justify capital punishment. The other aggravating circumstance was its finding that the crime was particularly vile.
But Tuggle's lawyer was not present when he was interviewed by the state psychologist, and at the sentencing trial Tuggle was not allowed to hire, at state expense, a psychologist who might rebut the state's testimony about future dangerousness.
The Virginia Supreme Court ruled that the future-dangerous factor was invalid, but it upheld Tuggle's death sentence based on the remaining aggravating factor.
Tuggle then turned to the federal courts for help, but the 4th Circuit ruled last June that his sentence could stand. The appeals court relied, in part, on a 1983 Supreme Court decision that said a death sentence may be upheld even when one of two aggravating factors is invalidated.
In Monday's opinion, however, the justices said their 1983 decision ``does not support the quite different proposition that the existence of a valid aggravator always excuses a constitutional error in the admission or exclusion of evidence.''
The justices said the two lower courts apparently found that any psychiatric evidence Tuggle would have introduced at his sentencing trial would not have influenced the sentencing jury's consideration of the vileness factor.
``Nevertheless, the absence of such evidence may well have affected the jury's ultimate decision, based on all of the evidence before it, to sentence [Tuggle] to death rather than life imprisonment,'' the high court said.
Memo: NOTE: Shorter version ran in Metro edition.