ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, December 22, 1996 TAG: 9612230083
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-6 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: RICHMOND
SOURCE: Associated Press
Lawyers for Virginia's youngest death row inmate have filed another appeal seeking to spare him from execution.
``We're not asking for a new trial. We're asking for a new sentencing,'' the condemned man, Steve Roach, said in a phone interview from Mecklenburg Correctional Center in Boydton.
Roach, 20, contends his trial lawyers were ineffective and that the judge tainted his image by allowing the jury to see him in leg irons as they considered his punishment.
A Greene County jury decided in 1995 that Roach should be executed for the December 1993 shotgun slaying of Mary Ann Hughes, 70.
In another death row case, a Prince William County judge set an execution date of Feb. 6 for Michael Carl George, who abducted, tortured, robbed and murdered a 15-year-old Potomac High School student in 1990.
Circuit Judge Herman Whisenant Jr. set the date Friday, a month after a federal appeals court ruling that upheld George's capital murder conviction and death sentence.
Roach's new appeal is his second to the Virginia Supreme Court. His first appeal was rejected by the court in March, and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case in October.
The jury convicted Roach in part because he told Greene County authorities he killed Hughes and stole her car.
He later backed away from the confession, saying he made it only because deputies weren't satisfied with a statement that he had been to the scene with another man.
There were footprints and fingerprints taken from the scene that didn't match Roach's, according to evidence presented at his trial.
On Friday, Roach declined to say whether he is an innocent man or a witness to a killing.
``We're not focusing on that too much. There's some things in the confession that aren't true and some things in it that are true,'' he told The Daily Progress of Charlottesville.
Roach hopes the recent spotlight on capital punishment in Virginia will lead to fundamental changes in the system.
``Somewhere along the line, maybe it's after I'm gone, they've got to decide on the juvenile death penalty,'' he said.
Roach, a high-school dropout, was 17 when he killed Hughes, who had been a neighborhood friend to the troubled youth.
In November, Gov. George Allen commuted the sentence of an inmate just before he was scheduled to die; the U.S. Supreme Court agreed last week to consider whether another prisoner who received support from the pope should get another sentencing hearing.
In the meantime, Roach said the eight executions in Virginia this year have made him realize the gravity of his situation.
``These last few executions have gotten to me. When I first came here, there wasn't that many,'' he said. ``Now you wonder when you wake up the next morning if they'll read you your death warrant.''
LENGTH: Medium: 62 linesby CNB