THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Tuesday, January 24, 1995              TAG: 9501240297
SECTION: LOCAL                    PAGE: B3   EDITION: FINAL 
SOURCE: LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE 
                                             LENGTH: Short :   37 lines

EDMONDS LOSES HIS BID FOR A STAY OF EXECUTION

Dana Ray Edmonds lost his bid for a stay of execution Monday, even though U.S. District Judge James Turk said Edmonds had been denied his constitutional right to effective legal counsel.

Edmonds' lawyers immediately appealed to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, but the decision likely means that at 9 p.m. tonight Edmonds will become the first Virginia prisoner to be executed by lethal injection.

Turk concluded that Edmonds' rights had been violated because his trial attorney, J. Patterson Rogers III of Danville, also represented Laverne Coles, a prosecution witness against Edmonds.

Barry Weinstein, Edmonds' current lawyer, contended in a hearing Saturday that Rogers' situation prevented him from aggressively cross-examining Coles, since he would be defending her in court later on an unrelated charge.

Weinstein argued that the conflict of interest was a sufficiently serious violation of Edmonds' rights to require a new trial.

Turk found otherwise.

``Even if Edmonds had been appointed a new counsel and refrained from waiving his right to a jury trial, the court is confident that he still would have been found guilty,'' Turk wrote in Monday's decision.

Edmonds was convicted of murdering Danville grocer John Elliott during a July 1983 robbery.

Edmonds was informed of Turk's decision by his lawyers.

KEYWORDS: CAPITAL PUNISHMENT DEATH ROW EXECUTION APPEAL by CNB