THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, December 13, 1995 TAG: 9512130371
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LAURA LaFAY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 166 lines
Ten years ago, when Coleman Wayne Gray was being tried for murder in a Suffolk courtroom, jurors were asked to look at photographs of a young woman, shot dead in her burned car.
They were also shown pictures of the woman's 3-year-old daughter, dead of carbon monoxide poisoning in the car's trunk.
The woman was Lisa Sorrell, 22, of Chesapeake. The photos showed her slumped on the passenger side floorboard of her burgundy Honda, shot six times in the head. Her little girl, Shanta, lay dead in the trunk, curled in a fetal position, covered with soot.
Passing the photos among themselves, the jurors looked ``stunned-faced,'' remembers James Moore, the Suffolk lawyer who represented Gray. It took them an hour and 10 minutes to sentence Gray to death.
There was just one problem.
Gray was not on trial for killing Lisa and Shanta Sorrell. He was on trial for killing Richard McClelland, the manager of a Suffolk Murphy's Mart and the father of four children.
On Thursday, Gray is scheduled to die by lethal injection for the McClelland murder. But there is a possibility he would not have been sentenced to death at all, his lawyers say, if the jury hadn't been led to believe he killed Lisa and Shanta Sorrell, a crime for which he has never been charged.
``In America, if the state wants to put someone to death, the state should do it on reliable evidence,'' says William H. ``Chip'' Wright of Richmond, one of Gray's lawyers. ``And the Sorrell evidence is clearly unreliable. If the state wants to put someone to death, they should do it on the basis of a fair trial. And Coleman Gray didn't get one.''
At least one judge - federal Judge James R. Spencer - agrees with Wright.
Last August, Spencer set aside Gray's death sentence and ordered a new sentencing. The surprise introduction of the Sorrell evidence ``violated the moral standards of fair play embodied in the due process clause of the 14th Amendment,'' Spencer wrote in his opinion.
``Coleman Gray and his attorneys were ambushed. The evidence . . . carries no assurance of reliability whatsoever, and the court finds that there was a gross abuse of the sentencing process.''
Without addressing the issue of whether Gray was involved in the Sorrell murders, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in June overturned Spencer's ruling based on a procedural issue.
Although Gray admits taking part in the abduction, robbery and murder of Richard McClelland, he denies he was the triggerman in the case. He also has steadfastly denied having anything to do with the Sorrell killings. No one has been charged in the case.
``I didn't know those people, and I had never heard anything about them until this happened,'' he said during an interview Tuesday from the death house at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt. ``I believe in my heart that the Chesapeake police knew I didn't have anything to do with the case. I think they took an opportunity to close the book on an unsolved crime.
``It didn't matter who, or what color. They only wanted to close the case.''
Gray, an African American, was tried and sentenced by an all-white jury.
Chesapeake detective Michael Slezak, who investigated the Sorrell killings, at first suspected Lisa Sorrell's husband, Timothy.
At the hearing before Judge Spencer last year, Slezak testified that Timothy Sorrell had ``admitted being at the Greenbrier Mall on the evening of the murders,'' ``made suspicious comments after he was notified his wife and child had been found, changed his alibi throughout the murder investigation, and had a motive to commit the murder.''
That motive was a $58,000 life insurance policy taken out on Lisa and Shanta Sorrell two weeks before her death.
But Slezak says he changed his mind about Timothy Sorrell when confronted with ``similarities'' between the McClelland case and the murders of Lisa and Shanta Sorrell. Both Lisa Sorrell and Richard McClelland were shot six times in the head with a .32 caliber handgun. And in both cases, an attempt was made to set fire to their cars.
According to Slezak, there is evidence implicating Gray in the case that has never been made public. Gray was not charged, he says, because ``we had some reluctant witnesses in the case,'' and ``we felt that those witnesses were necessary in order to prosecute.''
But Robert E. Kowalsky, a Chesapeake lawyer who was the city's chief prosecutor when Lisa and Shanta Sorrell were found murdered in December of 1984, tells a different story. Kowalsky says there is another reason Gray wasn't charged: questions about the evidence.
``I was given a time frame in which (the murders) were supposed to have occurred,'' said Kowalsky. ``. . . And I had a problem with the window of opportunity, so to speak. That was one issue that was never answered to my satisfaction.''
Therefore, Kowalsky said, he decided not to prosecute Gray.
Nevertheless, during Gray's December 1985 trial for the murder of McClelland, Suffolk prosecutor C. Phillips Ferguson persuaded the jury to recommend a death sentence, at least in part, by tying Gray to the Sorrell case. The link was made through the testimony of Gray's codefendant.
That codefendant was Melvin Tucker. Upon arrest, he and Gray each accused the other of pulling the trigger. But Tucker entered into a plea bargain with prosecutors: In exchange for his testimony against Gray, his charge would be reduced to first-degree murder.
Tucker's testimony was essential to the case against Gray. Under Virginia's ``triggerman law,'' the state must prove that a defendant actually pulled the trigger before that person can be convicted of capital murder.
Tucker stuck to the deal and testified that Gray killed McClelland. After the jury convicted Gray, Tucker took the stand again. This time, he testified that Gray had also confided in him that he had ``knocked off'' Lisa Sorrell.
Over objections by Gray's lawyers, Ferguson used the Sorrell murders as an example of Gray's future dangerousness, one of two elements that must be proved before a defendant can be sentenced to death.
``He's committed murder after murder, many in the same style,'' Ferguson told the jury. ``He's done it to Richard McClelland. . . he did it to Lisa Sorrell and he even did it to Shanta Sorrell, the little daughter. . . ''
On Dec. 5, 1984, Lisa Sorrell drove away from her mother's house near Greenbrier Mall at 4:30 or 4:45 p.m. She said she was going to the mall so Shanta could have her photo taken with Santa Claus.
According to Gray's petition for clemency, filed Tuesday, Gray picked up his wife Melinda from her job at the Suffolk Murphy's Mart about 4:30 p.m. the same day. It was the same Murphy's Mart from which McClelland would be abducted the following May.
A time card showed that Melinda Gray checked out of the store at 4:30 p.m. Dec. 5 and checked in at 5:29 p.m. Gray's lawyers say he could not possibly have driven from the Murphy's Mart to Greenbrier Mall, abducted Lisa and Shanta Sorrell, driven them to Cooke's Mill Lane (where the car containing their bodies was found days later), shot Lisa Sorrell, and made it back to the Murphy's Mart by 5:29 p.m. in rush-hour traffic.
In addition, say Gray's lawyers, Lisa Sorrell may not have had time to be abducted and killed by Gray.
``We know she ate after she left her mother's house because the medical examiner found food in her stomach and food doesn't stay in the stomach very long,'' says Wright. ``And she may have stopped by the bank to pick up the money orders that were found in her car. Also, when the car was found, there were packages in it, possibly purchased at the mall. . . If she didn't leave her mother's house until 4:30 or 4:45, then when is all this stuff supposed to be happening?
``She couldn't have finished doing all those things before 5 p.m. And if Gray hadn't abducted her by 5 p.m., then he wouldn't have had time to get back to the Murphy's Mart, where we know he was by at least 5:29.''
In Suffolk, Willie Nims and Lawrence E. Culbertson Sr., two members of Coleman Gray's jury, insisted this week that they would have sentenced Gray to death even without the Sorrell evidence.
``We were in there for three minutes and everyone said they wanted to give him the electric chair,'' remembers jury foreman Culbertson. ``And then we said, `Well look, we can't go back there that quick.' So we just sat in there and ate sandwiches and doughnuts and talked a little.''
Culbertson says his conscience is clear.
But Carl E. Eason, Jr. and Moore, the two Suffolk lawyers who represented Gray at his trial, remain haunted by the case.
Not only did the prosecutor mislead them about the kind of evidence he planned to present at Gray's sentencing, but information made public during Gray's appeals indicates that the state illegally withheld evidence that might have helped him, they say.
Moore says he doesn't practice much criminal law anymore. And the Gray case changed his mind about the death penalty.
Now he is opposed to it. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
If Coleman Gray is executed as scheduled Thursday, he will be the
six inmate to be put to death this year in Virginia, a modern day
record.
Graphic
MOST EXECUTIONS SINCE 1976
SOURCE: National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty
[For complete graphic, please see microfilm]
KEYWORDS: MURDER DEATH ROW CAPITAL PUNISHMENT VIRGINIA by CNB