ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, July 11, 1996 TAG: 9607110044
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
SCOTTY Wayne Overby, 28, was a lucky winner this week at death-penalty roulette - a game the state should quit playing.
Last summer, Overby's estranged wife wasn't so lucky. The crime was as heinous as they get: Sheila Ann Stafford, 27, was brutally raped and murdered, her corpse then defiled.
For those offenses, Overby is going to prison, where he is to stay for the rest of his life. But he won't reside on death row, for which he can thank his history of alcoholism and psychiatric problems, the compassion of some in the victim's family, and a Montgomery County judge willing to take such considerations into account before pronouncing sentence.
In terming Overby "a victim of the health-care system," the judge had a point. The month before the murder, Overby was released from a psychiatric center, after his health insurance ran out.
But by the legal definition for determining criminal guilt, Overby was not insane; conversely, what capital murderer is the picture of mental health?
In forgiving Overby, said Circuit Judge Ray Grubbs, the victim's family showed "immeasurable depth of humanity" and "incomprehensible forgiveness." The characterization seems apt.
But whether to execute or spare the life of a murderer is a decision that ultimately must belong to society, not the families of victims. Our system of criminal justice is grounded on the notion that violence against another's person or property is an offense not just against individual victims, and is not to be settled by individual vengeance. The notion, rather, is that violent crime is an offense against society as a whole, its perpetrators to be prosecuted and punished by the state.
Circuit judges must take the law as it stands, as it is written by legislatures and interpreted by higher courts. By that standard, Grubbs' decision not to impose the death penalty, and his reasoning for it, are unexceptionable.
In forestalling the possibility of yet one more execution by the state, the judge also and admirably kept the gap between society's norms and the behavior of the criminally lethal from narrowing yet one more notch.
But the fact that Overby was lucky points up the fact that others aren't. That the choice of winners and losers doesn't necessarily reflect the viciousness of the crime. That Virginia, now that it has genuine life imprisonment without parole, should close the doors on the capital-punishment casino.
LENGTH: Short : 49 linesby CNB