THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, June 9, 1994 TAG: 9406090742
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A12 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: 940609 LENGTH: ROANOKE
U.S. District Judge James Turk on Wednesday overturned Tuggle's 1984 capital murder conviction, saying the inmate's constitutional rights were violated repeatedly during the trial.
{REST} 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.
Turk said the state must either release Tuggle, 42, or grant him a new trial within six months.
John Tate, Tuggle's original court-appointed attorney, said he was not surprised the conviction was finally overturned.
``But that's not saying I expected it,'' he said.
Smyth County Commonwealth's Attorney Roy Evans initially reacted with disbelief at the news. Evans then said he had to consult with Attorney General Jim Gilmore's office about a possible appeal of Turk's ruling.
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.
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.
The judge said the trial judge erred by failing to let Tuggle's attorneys question potential jurors individually before the trial, resulting in a jury that was biased against the defendant.
And Turk said the conviction should be overturned because the instructions given to the jury before it went into deliberations were unconstitutionally vague.
Witnesses at Tuggle's trial said he met Havens at a dance and that she was seen in his car afterward. She never returned.
Nearly a week later, Tuggle was stopped by a state trooper and admitted to robbing a service station. A gun in his possession subsequently was proved to be the weapon used in Havens' murder.
Five months before Havens' murder, Tuggle had been paroled on a 1972 second-degree murder conviction.
Tuggle's 1984 escape was not his last attempt at freedom.
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.
by CNB