THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, January 14, 1995 TAG: 9501140163
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium: 66 lines
A prisoner injured while working on an inmate road crew cannot receive worker's compensation benefits, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled Friday.
The decision reversed a Virginia Court of Appeals ruling that the Worker's Compensation Commission erred in denying benefits to convicted felon James M. Woodward.
The Supreme Court also upheld the capital murder convictions of Thomas D. Strickler, who killed James Madison University student Leanne Whitlock by crushing her skull with a 69-pound rock; Kenneth L. Wilson of Newport News, who murdered his next-door neighbor after tying up and tormenting the woman's daughter and a friend; and Jason M. Joseph, who killed a man during the robbery of a Portsmouth sandwich shop.
The Supreme Court said the worker's compensation case ``involves a matter of significant precedential value.'' Woodward should not receive benefits, the court ruled, because he was a ward of the state and was not at liberty to contract for personal services.
Woodward was injured while trimming trees along a Warren County highway in 1990. He was earning 27 cents an hour working on a 10-man ``gun gang'' under supervision of the state Department of Transportation and guarded by an armed correctional officer.
The intermediate appeals court said Woodward's working arrangement ``contained all the elements of a contract.'' The Supreme Court disagreed.
``The pivotal question . . . becomes whether prisoners in Virginia, who are not on a work-release program, are capable of making a true contract of hire with the commonwealth or any of its agencies,'' the court wrote. ``We answer that query in the negative.''
In the Strickler capital murder case, the court rejected arguments that he was denied effective representation and that his trial was tainted by an improper jury instruction.
Strickler was convicted of abducting Whitlock, 19, at the Valley Mall in Harrisonburg Jan. 5, 1990. Her nude body was found eight days later in a wooded area, buried under two logs and a pile of leaves.
On the frozen ground nearby, police found the murder weapon: a bloodstained, 69-pound rock.
The murder weapon in the Wilson case in Newport News was a knife. Jacqueline M. Stephens was stabbed at least 10 times and her throat was slit.
Wilson stabbed Stephens' 12-year-old daughter in the throat and twisted the knife, which he also used to torment the girl's 14-year-old friend. A neighbor who saw Wilson leave in Stephens' car called police, who found the woman's bloody body tied to her bed.
The Supreme Court rejected Wilson's argument that the state lacked sufficient evidence to sustain a capital murder conviction. It also rejected, as it has in other cases, a claim that the jury should have been instructed about parole eligibility.
In Portsmouth, Joseph was convicted of murdering sandwich shop employee Jeffrey Anderson during a robbery. Joseph told an accomplice he shot Anderson ``because he laughed at me.''
Joseph raised several issues on appeal, including that the death penalty constitutes cruel and unusual punishment and that use of his prior convictions to establish ``future dangerousness'' violates the constitutional protection against double jeopardy. by CNB