ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, December 6, 1995 TAG: 9512060046
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
A MAN ACCUSED OF MURDER will plead guilty to another killing in West Virginia, his lawyers say. They hope to assure the jury that he has no chance of parole, so he'll be sentenced to life rather than death.
One week before his capital murder trial begins in Roanoke, a man accused of crimes in three states will plead guilty to murder in West Virginia - as part of a strategy that his lawyers hope will keep him off death row.
Paul D. Thompson's lawyers say they want him to plead guilty to beating an elderly man to death in Marion County, W.Va., before he goes on trial for the slaying and robbery of a Roanoke woman found stuffed in a car trunk in October 1994.
If a Roanoke jury convicts Thompson of the capital murder of Virgie Green, prosecutors are sure to use evidence of the West Virginia slaying in seeking the death sentence.
But defense attorneys Jonathan Apgar and David Damico want to use the West Virginia conviction for another reason: It assures that Thompson will never be released on parole, a factor they say might sway a jury to spare his life.
"The jury is going to hear that he will never see the light of day again," Apgar said, arguing that Thompson's no-parole status might undercut prosecutors' contentions that he is a future threat to society.
Thompson's attorneys are taking advantage of a 1994 U.S. Supreme Court decision holding that defense lawyers seeking to prevent the death penalty have the right to inform jurors when life in prison means exactly that.
A plea agreement already worked out in West Virginia sets Thompson's punishment at life without parole. And because he has been convicted of trying to kill a man in Florida several days after Green's death, the 25-year-old also would be ineligible for parole in Virginia under the recently passed "three-strikes-and-you're-out" law.
Because Green was killed in 1994, Thompson is not covered by no-parole laws that affect all defendants convicted of felonies that happened on or after Jan. 1. Since then, lawyers have speculated that the lack of parole influenced juries not to impose death sentences in several cases.
If Thompson is convicted of capital murder and the trial goes into a second, sentencing phase, Apgar and Damico would likely be asking a jury for mercy just a few days before Christmas.
It has been 17 years since a Roanoke jury sentenced a defendant to death, and that verdict was later overturned by the Virginia Supreme Court.
At a hearing Tuesday in Roanoke Circuit Court, Damico also raised questions about evidence collected from the Green crime scene that he said has been "misplaced, lost ... or intentionally destroyed."
When Green's body was found in the trunk of a junked car behind her Woods Avenue home in Old Southwest, her head was covered by a plastic bag. That bag and other items have since disappeared, Damico said. Police say they discarded the items after first photographing them.
Damico asked that the charges against Thompson be dismissed because of the missing evidence - or, as an alternative, that prosecutors be barred from mentioning the items in question. Judge Clifford Weckstein took the motion under advisement.
By year's end, Thompson will have faced trial for three violent crimes in as many states:
In West Virginia, he is expected to plead guilty within a week to the Aug. 23, 1994, death of Harold Jones. Jones was struck in the head, robbed and left in a shed at his farm near Fairmont.
In Roanoke, Thompson is awaiting trial for Green's slaying. Green, 44, had befriended Thompson and a fellow drifter last October, inviting them into her home.
Thompson's companion and former cellmate in a West Virginia prison, David McKeone, has already been convicted of murder and robbery and sentenced to life in prison for participating in Green's death. McKeone testified at his trial that Thompson - worried that Green might report their crimes to police -struck her on the head with a wrench as she sat playing cards.
Her body was discovered in a car trunk Nov. 1, 1994, five days after she was reported missing by her family.
And in Florida, both men have been convicted of the attempted murder of an elderly man whose car they stole several days after Green was killed in Roanoke. The crime spree ended when Thompson and McKeone were arrested in Texas.
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