THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Wednesday, February 19, 1997          TAG: 9702190427
SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B7   EDITION: FINAL 
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS 
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                        LENGTH:   27 lines

DEATH ROW APPEALS IN PORTSMOUTH, BEACH SLAYINGS ARE DENIED

The U.S. Supreme Court refused without comment Tuesday to hear the appeals of Virginia death row inmates Michael David Clagett and Johnile L. Dubois.

Clagett, 35, was convicted in July 1995 of killing four people in a Virginia Beach neighborhood bar, the Witchduck Inn.

Bar owner LamVan Son, cook Wendel G. Parrish Jr., waitress Karen Rounds and customer Abdelaziz Gren were each shot in the head on June 30, 1994.

Clagett's girlfriend, Denise Holsinger, had been fired as a waitress less than a month before the slayings. Clagett admitted to the murders but said Holsinger had urged him to commit the crime.

Dubois, 30, was convicted of gunning down a clerk during the robbery of a Portsmouth convenience store in November 1991. The clerk, Philip C. Council, was killed when he was unable to open a jammed cash register drawer.

Dubois pleaded guilty to the killing in a plea agreement with prosecutors, who agreed not to seek the death penalty.

But Circuit Judge Johnny E. Morrison decided that Dubois' past record indicated he posed a serious threat to society and gave Dubois the death penalty.