
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, July 13, 1990                   TAG: 9007130513
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A5   EDITION: STATE 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

DEATH ROW INMATE ASKS FOR NEW TRIAL

Attorneys for death row inmate Dana Ray Edmonds argued Thursday in U.S. District Court in Roanoke that on several issues, Edmonds deserves a new trial and resentencing.

Edmonds, of Danville, was convicted and sentenced to death in 1983 for the beating and stabbing death of 62-year-old John Elliott, a Danville grocer.

Edmonds, 28, has appealed his sentence numerous times, the last in the U.S. Supreme Court, which refused to hear the case on direct appeal, said John S. diBene, one of two Washington, D.C., attorneys representing Edmonds.

In determining whether Edmonds' capital murder conviction and death sentence can be upheld, U.S. Judge James Turk has been asked if the death penalty was a "cruel and unusual" sentence in Edmonds' case and whether the attorney who represented him during the 1983 trial, J. Patterson Rogers III, "did all, constitutionally, he was required to do," diBene said.

The action was brought in federal court, which can review state convictions for violations of the U.S. Constitution.

Edmonds is on death row at the Mecklenburg Correctional Center in Boydton.

In an appeal to the state Supreme Court in 1985, which failed, Edmonds contended he could not be convicted of premeditated murder, because the killing occurred during a struggle over a gun.

by CNB