THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, October 31, 1995 TAG: 9510310291
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LAURA LaFAY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 88 lines
In a rare move Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court sent back the case of Virginia death row inmate Lem Davis Tuggle, saying that both the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the state Supreme Court misinterpreted the ruling on which they based their decisions to uphold Tuggle's death sentence.
``It's rare for them to issue a ruling like this on the merits (of the case) without any argument,'' said Tuggle's lawyer, Timothy Kaine of Richmond.
``Usually when a case goes to the Supreme Court, one side says there was a constitutional violation and one side says there isn't. But here, it was just clear from the record that there was a constitutional violation of due process.''
The Supreme Court justices sent the case back to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Tuggle will remain on death row until the judges decide whether the error in his case is cause for a new sentencing hearing.
Tuggle, 43, got a stay of execution on Sept. 21, hours before he was scheduled to die by lethal injection. The high court's decision Monday could affect a number of other Virginia death-penalty cases, Richmond capital defense attorney Gerald T. Zerkin said Monday.
``We've been litigating the daylights out of this issue (in Virginia), and we've been losing case aftercase,'' Zerkin said. ``This may have a substantial effect on a number of cases.''
It is not yet clear which cases may be affected, Zerkin said.
Monday's decision marks the second time the U.S. Supreme Court has intervened on Tuggle's behalf. The first time, in 1985, the justices vacated the Virginia Supreme Court's judgment to uphold Tuggle's death sentence.
In that instance, the court intervened because the Smyth County judge who presided over Tuggle's case had allowed the jury to hear testimony that Tuggle was a future danger to society but did not let Tuggle rebut the testimony with his psychiatrist.
To impose a death sentence in Virginia, a jury must find at least one of two aggravating factors: that the defendant is a future danger to society or that the crime was especially vile. In Tuggle's case, it found both and sentenced him to death.
The Virginia Supreme Court upheld that sentence. But because the future dangerousness finding was based on evidence presented in violation of the law, the Supreme Court sent the case to state's high court.
The Virginia justices reaffirmed Tuggle's death sentence because, they said, the jury had also found his crime - the rape and murder of a 52-year-old Marion woman - to be vile. They based their decision on Zant v. Georgia, a case in which a death sentence was upheld under similar circumstances. On Monday, however, the Supreme Court justices made clear that both courts had misunderstood their ruling in the Georgia case.
``Although our holding in Zant supports the conclusion that the invalidation of one aggravator does not necessarily require that a death sentence be set aside, that holding does not support the quite different proposition that the existence of a valid aggravator always excuses a constitutional error,'' the justices wrote in a unanimous opinion.
Tuggle's case has been in post-conviction litigation for 10 years. Stephen B. Bright, a death penalty expert at the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, blamed the decade-long battle on the notoriously rigid Virginia Supreme Court.
``This is what happens when a state Supreme Court, by taking a hard-line stance, fails to reverse a case and have a new sentencing when there has been a constitutional error,'' Bright said.
``It results in a lot of unnecessary delay. People so often say that these cases are delayed because of legal maneuvering by the condemned. But in this case, the last 10 years is completely attributable to the state Supreme Court.''
Tuggle was sentenced to death in January 1984. On May 31, 1984, he became one of six death-row inmates who escaped from the Mecklenburg Correctional Center. All were recaptured within a month.
During the Persian Gulf War in 1991, Tuggle wrote letters to then Gov. L. Douglas Wilder and President George Bush volunteering to lead the nation's death-row inmates into Iraq to fight Saddam Hussein. The inmates ``could be sent on risk missions and, if killed, it would not matter,'' Tuggle said.
His offer was declined. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Lem Davis Tuggle will remain on death row pending a
decision in the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
KEYWORDS: DEATH ROW CAPITAL PUNISHMENT VIRGINIA MURDER
RAPE SEX CRIME by CNB