DATE: Thursday, September 18, 1997          TAG: 9709180368

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY LAURA LAFAY, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   89 lines

HITMAN EXECUTED BY INJECTION FOR ROLE IN MURDER

Mario Benjamin Murphy died by lethal injection Wednesday night, two hours after Gov. George F. Allen announced in a lengthy statement that he would not intervene in the case.

``Today is a good day to die,'' Murphy said in the execution chamber at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt. He then paused, and laughed as the fluids began flowing into his body.

``I forgive all of you,'' he said. ``I hope God does, too.''

Murphy, 25, was pronounced dead at 9:09 p.m., Warden David Garraghty said.

A Mexican citizen, Murphy was sentenced to death for the 1991 murder-for-hire of Navy cook James Radcliff. He was executed despite pleas for clemency from the government of Mexico, last-minute lobbying by the U.S. Department of State and a letter from the Southern Baptist Convention expressing fear for its missionaries around the world should the execution go forward.

``I cannot equate the brutal, premeditated murder committed by Murphy with any act that U.S. citizens, such as missionaries, would commit while in a host country,'' Allen said in the six-page statement.

Much of the concern about Murphy's execution centered on the failure of Virginia Beach officials to notify the Mexican Embassy of Murphy's arrest - an act required by an international treaty known as Article 36 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations.

Because they were denied the opportunity to help Murphy, Mexican officials maintained, Virginia Beach Commonwealth's Attorney Bob Humphreys was able to single him out for death from a group of six defendants charged with the same murder.

Of the six, all but Murphy were offered life sentences in exchange for guilty pleas. One of the defendants, Radcliff's wife, Robin, rejected the offer and went to trial. The jury deadlocked on the death penalty and sentenced her to life.

Although Humphreys has insisted that Murphy and Radcliff were the most culpable of those charged with the crime, the Virginia Attorney General's office disputed that assertion in a 1995 court brief.

``Allegations that Murphy was more culpable than his co-defendants . . . are simply wrong,'' stated the brief, which was submitted by then-Attorney General James S. Gilmore and his assistant, Donald R. Curry. Gilmore is the current Republican candidate for governor.

The court brief went unmentioned in Allen's justification for denying clemency. The omission, said Murphy lawyer William H. Wright Jr., is telling.

``In light of the governor's failure to address that statement by the top law enforcement official of the commonwealth, anyone must view his conclusions in this case with deep suspicion,'' said Wright.

Allen insisted Murphy's death sentence was fair, and defended his decision to let the execution go forward.

``There is no evidence at all that Murphy was singled out for unfair or discriminatory treatment based on his citizenship or ethnicity,'' the governor wrote.

``To overturn a valid sentence of a confessed murderer based on such a procedural issue - especially when the courts have said that no prejudice against Murphy resulted - would be an abdication of the oath I took as governor.''

Murphy's victim was beaten and stabbed to death as the result of a plot devised by his wife, Robin, and her lover, Gary Hinojosa.

Robin Radcliff and Gary Hinojosa recruited Murphy and three other teen-agers to kill James Radcliff so they could collect $100,000 in life insurance money. They married a week after the murder. Both are serving life sentences.

Also serving life sentences as a result of the crime are Michael Bourne, James Hall and Aaron Turner, Murphy's best friend from childhood.

On July 20, 1991, while Bourne waited in a car outside and Hall held a flashlight to illuminate the sleeping James Radcliff, Turner and Murphy beat and stabbed him to death. They did it, Turner said this week, because Hinojosa had told them Radcliff was beating his wife and had threatened that night to cut her open and remove her unborn child.

Murphy visited Wednesday with his mother, grandmother and other relatives.

``He seems pretty calm,'' said his mother, Sylvia Rodriguez of Virginia Beach. ``He's tired and worn out. It has been really emotional and hard on everybody.''

Craig Johnson, a friend of Murphy's from Virginia Beach, said he wasn't surprised that Murphy laughed at death.

``He always found humor in everything,'' Johnson said.

Murphy's death increased to 43 the number of executions in Virginia since the state brought back the death penalty in 1982. Twenty-one of those executions have taken place during the Allen administration. MEMO: This report was supplemented by The Associated Press ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

Mario Murphy KEYWORDS: CAPITAL PUNISHMENT VIRGINIA DEATH ROW

MURDER EXECUTION

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