THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, February 18, 1997 TAG: 9702180314
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LAURA LaFAY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: 75 lines
Coleman Wayne Gray was sentenced to death for the murder of Richard McClelland in Suffolk after prosecution witnesses at his 1985 sentencing testified they heard him confess.
Some of the witnesses also said they heard Gray confess to two earlier, unrelated murders.
Now, with Gray's Feb. 26 execution date looming, the same witnesses are saying they lied about both confessions.
In affidavits attached to a petition filed Friday for a stay of execution and a new review of Gray's case, four witnesses say they gave false testimony when they said Gray told them he killed McClelland, the manager of a Suffolk Murphy's Mart and the father of four children.
Three of the four witnesses said they also lied when they testified that Gray had confessed to killing a Chesapeake woman and her 3-year-old daughter in December 1994. Gray was never charged in those deaths.
``These detectives threaten(ed) to charge me with accessory after the fact in the murder of Mr. McClelland . . . if I did not cooperate with them,'' said the affidavit of one witness who met Gray in jail.
``The testimony I gave . . . was false. I never heard Mr. Gray say he killed anyone,'' said the affidavit of another witness, also locked up with Gray.
The fourth witness, Melvin Tucker, was Gray's co-defendant. Tucker avoided the death penalty by testifying that it was Gray - not he - who pulled the trigger after the two robbed and abducted McClelland in May 1985.
Tucker, now in prison, is apparently sticking to that story. But his other testimony - that Gray told him he killed the woman and her daughter - was false, he now says, and contends that Suffolk Commonwealth's Attorney C. Phillips Ferguson knew it.
``I never heard of (the murdered woman and her daughter) until I was in Mr. Ferguson's office,'' Tucker said in his affidavit.
``Ferguson wanted me to testify that Gray admitted killing (them).''
Ferguson's office was closed Monday, and he could not be reached for comment.
McClelland, 49, was forced off the road shortly after leaving his job in Churchland in May 1985. He was taken back to the Murphy's Mart, where his two abductors robbed the store. He was then driven to Tidewater Community College and shot six times in the head. His body was dumped in Suffolk.
McClelland's car, found seven miles from his body, had been saturated with flammable liquid and set on fire.
Gray was convicted in December 1985 of murdering McClelland. The following day, during his sentencing hearing, prosecutors introduced testimony by Tucker and photographs of the bodies of Lisa Sorrell and her daughter, Shanta.
Lisa Sorrell was also shot six times in the head by an assailant who then tried to set her car on fire. Shanta Sorrell was found suffocated in the car's trunk.
The evidence convinced jurors Gray was a future danger to society. They sentenced him to death.
When Gray challenged the death sentence in federal court, a judge threw out the sentence, saying the evidence was ``very questionable'' and that the prosecution's tactics violated Gray's constitutional right to due process.
The case went next to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which reinstated Gray's death sentence. Then it went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ordered the 4th Circuit to reconsider its opinion.
For the second time, the 4th Circuit affirmed Gray's death sentence.
Now Gray is asking for another review of his case. If it weren't for the testimony in question, he argues, he might not have been convicted of capital murder or sentenced to death.
``This case has raised very serious concerns among federal judges about the fairness of Coleman Gray's trial,'' said Gray's attorney, Donald R. Lee Jr.
No one has ever been charged with the murders of Lisa and Shanta Sorrell.
Lee said he expects a response to Gray's petition by Wednesday. ILLUSTRATION: Coleman Wayne Gray
KEYWORDS: DEATH ROW EXECUTION WITNESS