DATE: Friday, November 14, 1997             TAG: 9711140631

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B7   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS 

DATELINE: JARRATT, VA.                      LENGTH:   46 lines

VIRGINIA MAN EXECUTED FOR 1988 KILLING OF STOREKEEPER

A prisoner who slipped away from a road work gang and then killed a woman in her carpet and tile store was executed Thursday night for the 1988 slaying.

Dawud Mu'Min, 44, was pronounced dead by injection at 9:41 p.m. at the Greensville Correctional Center. Gov. George F. Allen rejected his request for clemency.

Mu'Min gave no final statement.

The U.S. Supreme Court twice rejected stay requests on Thursday, the last time at 9:15 p.m., as well as a formal appeal in which Mu'Min's lawyers argued that he was denied a fair trial.

Allen, in refusing to intervene, said the murder of Dale City storekeeper Gladys Nopwasky ``was heinous by any standard of human decency.''

Following Allen's decision, lawyers for Mu'Min filed new papers with U.S. District Judge Robert E. Payne of Richmond alleging Mu'Min's due-process rights were violated. Payne rejected the motion.

Allen said he was not concerned by Mu'Min's decision Wednesday to dismiss his legal counsel of six years - McGuire, Woods, Battle & Boothe - after questions arose about a possible conflict of interest.

Allen announced Tuesday he would join McGuire Woods when his term as governor expires in January.

``Mu'Min has the right to change lawyers if he so chooses at this point in the process, but such a choice does not cause distraction nor change the manner in which I have reviewed Mu'Min's plea for clemency,'' the governor said.

Gerald Zerkin, a Richmond attorney, was appointed by a federal judge Wednesday night to represent Mu'Min.

At the time of . Nopwasky's murder, Mu'Min was serving a 48-year sentence at the Haymarket Correctional Center for the 1973 murder of a Grayson County cab driver.

He was on a work detail with five other inmates at the Virginia Department of Transportation's Dale City facility when he escaped over a fence during a lunch break.

At his trial, prosecutors said Mu'Min walked a mile to the Ashdale Plaza Shopping Center. He entered a flooring and carpet store, found Nopwasky there alone, knocked her to the floor, then beat and stabbed her to death. Four dollars were taken from a desk drawer near her body. KEYWORDS: CAPITAL PUNISHMENT EXECUTION

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