THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, November 5, 1994 TAG: 9411050626
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LAURA LAFAY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Short : 48 lines
Dana Ray Edmonds, sentenced to die for the 1983 murder of a Danville shopkeeper, will be the first Virginia inmate to be given a choice of electrocution or lethal injection.
A Circuit Court judge in Danville this week set Edmonds' execution date for Jan. 24, 1995. The law permitting lethal injection in Virginia was approved in the 1994 legislative session and takes effect Jan. 1.
The statute dictates that inmates must choose a method of execution not less than 15 days before they are scheduled to die. Anyone who refuses to choose a method will be killed by lethal injection.
Virginia executed five men in 1993, the most since the death penalty was reinstated here in 1982. Since the passage of the lethal-injection bill, only two men - Johnny Watkins of Danville and serial killer Timothy Spencer - have died in the state's electric chair.
Watkins was electrocuted in March. Spencer died in April. Both men were black, and had been convicted of killing white victims.
Edmonds, who is also black, has been awaiting execution since 1983, the year he was convicted of robbing and stabbing to death a white grocery store owner, John Elliott. Forty-one dollars was missing from the cash register.
Over the years, Edmonds filed four appeals. All were rejected except one - that his lawyer was so ineffective it prejudiced the jury. The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia ordered Edmonds to be resentenced. But the order was reversed by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The Supreme Court rejected Edmonds' petition on the matter.
Except for acquiring a gurney on which to place condemned inmates, the state has made no arrangements for lethal injections, Department of Corrections Director Ron Angelone said Friday.
``It's a very simple process,'' he said. ``I did it in Nevada. The needle and the IV are put in by medical people - paramedics or whatever. They'll put all that in, and begin the IV solution. And then the execution team will introduce the fatal solution.''
In Nevada, Angelone said, he presided over four executions by lethal injection.
KEYWORDS: CAPITAL PUNISHMENT by CNB