ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, December 13, 1996 TAG: 9612130036
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: JARRATT
SOURCE: DIANE STRUZZI STAFF WRITER
As the prisoner prepares for death at Greensville Correctional Center, witnesses listen to a presentation about executions in Virginia. Thursday night, Lem Davis Tuggle Jr. was the spectacle.
Minutes before 9 p.m., officials from the Department of Corrections, attorney general's office, even the newly appointed safety director, crowded the Death Chamber. They shook hands, paced the chamber floor, peered down the hall to Tuggle's cell, and waited.
At 9 p.m., the burly 44-year-old twice-convicted murderer walked into the Death Chamber. His lawyer, Timothy Kaine, and his spiritual adviser, Father James Griffin, stood by his side.
Handcuffed, Tuggle immediately rolled onto the gurney. Nine members of the execution team strapped him down, one gently tugging on Tuggle's prison shirt in an attempt to cover his exposed belly.
At 9:03 p.m., the intravenous feeds were in place. Tuggle uttered his last words shortly afterward.
"Merry Christmas," he said, his face not visible to witnesses, his voice barely audible.
At 9:08 p.m., he breathed hard and heavy. Ten minutes later, his breaths slowed to slight puffs. At 9:11 p.m., he was still.
He died at 9:12 p.m. and became the seventh prisoner in Virginia executed in 1996.
His death nudged the state into first place in the nation in number of executions. Missouri and South Carolina are tied in second: each has put six prisoners to death.
Last week, Tuggle said his religious beliefs had prepared him for death. His last hours were spent with the priest who guided him through his conversion to Catholicism.
"To see any friend of 13 years dying is very hard," Griffin said during an interview last week. "You believe he's with God, but you're sorry he's dead. There's a freeing part of it and a very tragic part of it."
Tuggle's body - which weighed more than 350 pounds - was taken to the medical examiner's office in Richmond, where an autopsy will be performed, said David Botkins, spokesman for the Department of Corrections.
From there, Tuggle entrusted his remains to friends he made through opposition to the death penalty. In an interview with The Roanoke Times last week, he said he had made arrangements for his body to be cremated and his ashes flown to England.
Some of his last visits this week were spent with a couple from England. Thursday afternoon, he spent two hours with his fiancee, according to Corrections authorities. His final meal was served at 5:05 p.m. Tuggle asked that its contents not be released.
Six volunteers and five media representatives watched the execution, captivated more by Tuggle's considerable size than by his crimes. Tuggle, bald save for a rim of hair grown shoulder length, died before a crowd of onlookers anticipating his last breath.
When Gov. George Allen denied clemency for the twice-convicted murderer Thursday, it officially closed Tuggle's 12-year campaign to overturn his death sentence. His legal battles took him twice to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Both times, the nation's highest court overturned the death sentence and sent it back to the lower courts. Both times, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reaffirmed its initial decision: Tuggle should die for the rape and murder of 52-year-old Jessie Geneva Havens.
Kaine, Tuggle's lawyer, had argued Tuggle's constitutional rights were violated when his defense attorneys were not allowed to hire their own state psychologist to review the case. Kaine did not return telephone calls for this story.
For the state, Tuggle's death provided a political opportunity. Because Tuggle murdered Havens while on parole for another killing, he became an example for politicians' stumping for "no parole" in Virginia. As one of the oldest cases on death row, Tuggle also played into arguments to limit the time that death-row inmates now have to appeal.
Virginia Attorney General Jim Gilmore "made this a priority of his when he came into office in 1993," Gilmore spokesman Mark Miner said Wednesday. "Justice is proceeding along."
While Tuggle said he opposed the death penalty, he also said he had surrendered himself to the idea of death soon after he was sentenced to it. He continued the appeal process only to accommodate the request of a female friend, he said.
"You prepare by faith, faith in God," Tuggle said in an interview last week. "The person on death row is not the same person they kill."
Tuggle said he changed - first realizing and combatting his problem with alcohol, and coming to terms with a turbulent childhood and accepting it, then re-examining his crimes and asking his victims' relatives for forgiveness.
But he never admitted culpability. He said an unknown person killed his first victim, a 17-year-old girl, and that his gun accidentally fired during a struggle with Havens.
His infamy began as a teen-ager, when he committed his first murder at age 19. In 1971, he befriended Shirley Mullins Brickey at an American Legion dance in his hometown of Smyth County, accompanied her to a deserted house near Seven Mile Ford and choked her to death.
He ran, stole a car and tried to make his way to Canada. Police arrested him in Baltimore a short time after the murder. Tuggle told deputies that he blacked out the night of Brickey's death from a combination of alcohol and drugs. Last week, Tuggle stood by that statement, adding his theory that a third person actually murdered Brickey.
For that crime he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. He was released on parole in 1983. Four months into his freedom he killed again. Once more, he attended the American Legion dance in Smyth County and lured away a woman.
This time, he raped and shot Havens, then fled. He robbed a nearby gas station. When caught he confessed to the robbery, even telling the sheriff's deputy where to find the gun. He later led authorities to Havens' body, which was found down an embankment one mile from the site of his first murder.
In 1984, Tuggle's first year on death row, he escaped with five other inmates in the largest death row breakout in U.S. history. He was recaptured nine days later in Vermont. His accomplices have since been executed.
Two more prisoners are scheduled to die next week, Ronald Hoke on Monday and Joseph Roger O'Dell III on Wednesday. O'Dell requested that he die in the electric chair, the first to do so since April 1994.
LENGTH: Long : 115 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: (headshot) Tuggle. color. KEYWORDS: EXECUTIONby CNB