ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, February 26, 1997 TAG: 9702260052
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-5 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: RICHMOND
SOURCE: Associated Press
Attorneys for death row inmate Coleman Wayne Gray have asked Gov. George Allen for clemency to stop Gray's execution tonight.
Gray is scheduled to die by injection at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt for the murder of convenience store manager Richard McClelland during a 1985 robbery and kidnapping in Suffolk.
Donald Lee, Gray's attorney, said in a meeting with Allen administration officials Monday that Gray's conviction was ``wholly unreliable'' and ``based on an unfair proceeding."
``It was an easy case to present to the governor because the facts proving how unfair Coleman Gray's trial was are very persuasive,'' Lee said. ``There are serious doubts concerning whether he was the trigger man, and to this day there isn't a shred of credible evidence linking him to [other] murders that were used to get a death sentence against him.''
A spokesman for Allen said the governor, with his counsel, will review the case before making a decision.
On Monday, Gray met with family and friends at the prison where executions are carried out, a Corrections Department spokesman said. He was moved there Saturday from death row at the Mecklenburg Correctional Center in Boydton, about 45 miles away.
Gray's lawyers also have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to look at the case again. Friday, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied a stay.
McClelland was shot in the head six times. Gray, a 38-year-old former laborer, has admitted taking part in the robbery leading to McClelland's death but claims his co-defendant, Melvin Tucker, shot McClelland.
Tucker said Gray pulled the trigger.
During the sentencing phase of Gray's trial, Tucker testified that Gray admitted killing a Chesapeake woman and her daughter in 1984.
Gray's lawyers contend that testimony was an ``ambush'' that wrongly caused Gray to get a death sentence. A federal judge set aside the sentence, but it was reinstated on appeal.
If the execution is carried out, Gray would become the 39th person put to death in Virginia since executions resumed in the state in 1982. It would be the second execution in the state this year.
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