THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, May 9, 1996 TAG: 9605090440
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Short : 32 lines
A federal appeals court on Wednesday granted a 30-day stay to death row inmate Lem Tuggle, who had been scheduled for execution on June 6.
Tuggle, sole survivor among six inmates who pulled off the largest death-row escape in U.S. history, sought the stay so he could appeal a 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling last month that upheld his death sentence.
The stay granted by a three-judge panel gives Tuggle time to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review his case.
Tuggle was convicted of the 1983 rape and murder of Jessie Geneva Havens in Smyth County. Havens, 52, and Tuggle had met at a dance. She was shot in the chest and thrown down an embankment.
The crime occurred four months after Tuggle was paroled from a sentence he was serving for the 1971 murder of a 17-year-old girl.
Tuggle and five other death-row inmates escaped from the Mecklenburg Correctional Center in 1984 after posing as guards. All six were recaptured within a month, and the five other inmates have been executed.
KEYWORDS: RAPE MURDER DEATH ROW by CNB