THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, June 9, 1994 TAG: 9406090527
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: 940609 LENGTH: ROANOKE
U.S. District Judge James Turk said Tuggle's constitutional rights were violated several times during his original trial, thereby making the verdict inherently unreliable.
{REST} Turk ordered the state to release Tuggle, 42, or grant him a new trial within six months.
``Oh, give me a break. Are you serious? Unbelievable,'' Roy Evans, Smyth County's commonwealth's attorney, told the Roanoke Times & World-News.
Tuggle was sentenced to death in January 1984 for the rape and capital murder of Jessie G. Havens, a 52-year-old Marion woman. He was one of six death-row inmates who escaped from the Mecklenburg Correctional Center on May 31, 1984. All were recaptured within a month. Tuggle and fellow escapee Willie Leroy Jones were caught a week after the escape in Stanford, Vt., after Tuggle robbed a gift shop.
The five others who escaped with Tuggle all have been executed.
Tuggle's escape attempts continued.
In 1985, he and three other inmates were caught trying to break out by brandishing a fake pistol made of cardboard and exploding a homemade matchstick bomb.
In 1987, Tuggle and another inmate tried unsuccessfully to break out of prison by cutting through metal screens and hiding their work with shoe polish.
Turk said that in order to convict Tuggle of capital murder, the prosecution had to prove the rape charge.
Turk said there was insufficient evidence to convict Tuggle of Havens' rape because no semen was found in her vagina, just small bruises outside the vagina.
``With such evidence, no rational fact-finder could have found proof beyond a reasonable doubt,'' Turk wrote in his 42-page opinion.
Turk also said Tuggle's rights were violated because the Smyth County court failed to appoint an independent psychiatrist and an expert pathologist to help in his defense.
{KEYWORDS} CAPITAL PUNISHMENT DEATH ROW by CNB