DATE: Tuesday, September 16, 1997           TAG: 9709160300

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY LAURA LAFAY, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: RICHMOND                          LENGTH:   78 lines

KILLER'S FAMILY PRESSING FOR CLEMENCY 2 DAYS BEFORE THE MEXICAN'S EXECUTION, ALLEN COMMUTES ANOTHER MAN'S SENTENCE

Relatives of Mario Murphy, a Mexican citizen scheduled to be executed Wednesday for a Virginia Beach murder, arrived from Tijuana, Mexico this week, bringing with them handmade posters imploring Gov. George F. Allen to spare Murphy's life.

``Mr. Gobernor Allen, please don't let our nephew die,'' read one of the signs, written by Bertha Montes, Murphy's 46-year-old aunt.

Montes and her family made the signs in Tijuana, then rolled them up so Montes and her brother, Carlos Marquez, could carry them on their 3,000-plus-mile journey to Richmond. On Monday, at a Richmond law office, Montes spread the posters out on a table to show a reporter.

``We know we maybe cannot see the governor, but we are hoping he will read these in the newspaper and feel all the things we feel,'' she said.

Barring clemency from Allen, Murphy, 25, will die by lethal injection Wednesday at 9 p.m. for the 1991 murder of Navy cook James Radcliff.

Six people were charged with the murder-for-hire of Radcliff, but Murphy alone was sentenced to death. The other defendants were offered life sentences by Virginia Beach Commonwealth's Attorney Bob Humphreys in exchange for a guilty plea

For that reason, Murphy's lawyers argued in a clemency petition submitted to Allen's office last week, Murphy's life should be spared.

He should also be spared, the lawyers said, because Murphy's death sentence was obtained in violation of an international treaty signed by both the United States and Mexico.

According to the terms of the treaty, the United States is required to notify the embassies of all foreign nationals arrested here. That didn't happen in the Murphy case. It wasn't until 1995 - three years after Murphy was sentenced to death - that the Mexican embassy learned of his fate.

Mexico, which filed its own clemency petition in the case last week, has offered to incarcerate Murphy in a Mexican prison should Allen decide to commute the sentence.

But the chances of that appeared to dim Monday when Allen's office announced that the governor had decided to commute another death sentence - that of Danville native William Ira Saunders, convicted in the slaying of a Danville businessman - because of recommendations from the prosecutor, the trial judge and the chief of the police department that investigated the case.

Allen, who has presided over 19 executions during his term as governor, has commuted only one other death case - that of Joseph Patrick Payne in November 1996.

With the blessing of the attorney general's office, Saunders' lawyers suspended his appeals and petitioned for clemency on April 23 of this year. The announcement of his commutation, made just two days before Murphy's scheduled execution, does not bode well for Murphy, legal experts say.

But Mark Christie, Allen's lawyer, said Monday that the timing of the Saunders decision has nothing to do with the Murphy case.

``It has absolutely no connection whatsoever to the other case this week,'' said Christie.

``None whatsoever - in terms of either scheduling or substance. Mr. Murphy's case will be decided totally on its own merits. The governor will decide based on that case and that case alone.

``It's not unusual, when you consider the gravity of a commutation, for it to take several months . . . It just worked out that way.''

Christie, whose job requires him to field clemency requests for Allen, is scheduled to speak by telephone this morning to Mexico's secretary of foreign relations, Mexico's director of consular protection and the chief legal adviser to Mexico's Department of Foreign Relations.

Montes and Carlos Marquez left Tijuana Monday to visit Murphy in Virginia's Death House at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt. Montes wasn't sure what she would say to her nephew, whom she hasn't seen since he was 15.

``How can I go and tell him, `Don't worry. Be a good boy. Everything's going to be just fine?' '' she asked.

``I feel so lost and so nervous and so worried.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos

The death sentence of Danville native William Ira Saunders, left,

was commuted two days before the scheduled execution of Mario

Murphy, right, of Mexico. KEYWORDS: DEATH ROW MURDER CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

VIRGINIA

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