ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Thursday, May 9, 1996                  TAG: 9605090076
SECTION: VIRGINIA                 PAGE: C-4  EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: Associated Press
RICHMOND 

DEATH ROW ESCAPEE GRANTED 30-DAY STAY

A federal appeals court on Wednesday granted a 30-day stay to death row inmate Lem Tuggle, who had been scheduled for execution June 6.

Tuggle, sole survivor among six inmates who pulled off the largest escape from death row in U.S. history, sought the stay so he could appeal a 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling last month that upheld his death sentence.

The stay granted by a three-judge panel of the court gives Tuggle time to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review his case.

Tuggle was convicted of the 1983 rape and murder of Jessie Geneva Havens in Smyth County. Havens, 52, and Tuggle had met at a dance. She was shot in the chest and thrown down an embankment.

The crime occurred four months after Tuggle was paroled from a sentence he was serving for the 1971 murder of a 17-year-old girl.

Tuggle and five other death row inmates escaped from the Mecklenburg Correctional Center in 1984 after posing as guards. All six were recaptured within a month; the five other inmates have been executed.

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