THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 7, 1996 TAG: 9607070079
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: 44 lines
Former death-row inmate Joseph M. Giarratano Jr. has been transferred to another prison after being stabbed at Buckingham Correctional Center, prison officials said.
Giarratano was treated at Southside Community Hospital in Farmville after the Thursday stabbing, said David Botkins, a spokesman for the Department of Corrections. He would not say where Giarratano was transferred while the stabbing is under investigation.
Botkins said the wound was ``not serious at all.''
He said the stabbing occurred about 4:30 p.m., but he had no information about the circumstances or the motive.
Gerald T. Zerkin, the Richmond lawyer who helped win a conditional pardon for Giarratano in 1991, said he understood that the wounds were not life-threatening.
Giarratano, 38, was sentenced to die for the rape and strangulation of 15-year-old Michelle Kline in Norfolk in 1979. He also was convicted of murder in the stabbing death of the teenager's mother, Barbara Kline, 44.
He came within three days of being executed in February 1991 before Gov. L. Douglas Wilder granted him a conditional pardon, commuted his death sentence and suggested a new trial.
But then-Attorney General Mary Sue Terry concluded that a new trial was not in order.
Amnesty International and other groups responded to assertions that Giarratano had been unfairly convicted by flooding Wilder's office with almost 6,000 telephone calls and letters urging the governor to stop the execution.
Zerkin contended that Giarratano's conviction was based in large part on contradictory confessions that were the result of drug and alcohol abuse rather than guilt.
During his stay in the prison system, Giarratano frequently has filed papers for other inmates and developed a reputation as being among the most adept of the system's inmate lawyers. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Joseph M. Giarratano Jr. won a conditional pardon in 1991 after the
governor's office was flooded with calls on his behalf.
KEYWORDS: STABBING DEATH ROW JOSEPH M. GIARRATANO by CNB