ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, July 9, 1996 TAG: 9607090051
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: RICHMOND
SOURCE: Associated Press
A federal appeals court on Monday upheld the death sentences given to three Richmond drug gang members involved in 10 murders in 1992.
The three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also overturned the decision of a lower court judge who said the three could not be executed until Congress decides on a method of execution for federal crimes. The U.S. attorney general's 1993 regulations specifying lethal injection as the execution method are sufficient, the three-judge panel said.
``We conclude that, absent directly pre-empting congressional action, the attorney general had constitutional and statutory authority to provide by regulation the means for executing death sentences,'' said the ruling written by Judge J. Dickson Phillips Jr.
The defendants - Cory Johnson, James H. Roane Jr. and Richard Tipton - were members of a drug ring known as the Newtowne gang, for the area of the city where it operated.
They were convicted of capital murder and drug charges and sentenced to death in June 1993 for the slayings of 10 people in January and February 1992. Most of the victims were drug trade competitors or underlings suspected of wrongdoing.
U.S. District Judge James R. Spencer said the death sentences could not be carried out until Congress authorized a method of execution. No one has been executed for a federal crime since the federal death penalty law took effect in 1988.
Spencer said only Congress had the power to authorize a method of execution, but the appeals panel disagreed.
``Although Congress clearly may, if it chooses, pre-emptively legislate the means of executing federal death sentences, its power to do so is not exclusive of the power of the executive branch,'' the court said.
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