ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, December 1, 1995 TAG: 9512010029
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
A Roanoke judge has rejected a lawyer's claim that police "tricked" a man into confessing to the capital murder of an Old Southwest woman.
The decision by Circuit Judge Clifford Weckstein means that a jury likely will hear the taped confession during the trial of Paul D. Thompson, which is scheduled to begin Dec. 11.
Thompson, a 26-year-old drifter charged in a three-state crime spree, faces the death penalty for the murder of Virgie Green, who was struck in the head with a blunt instrument and dumped in the trunk of a car parked behind her Woods Avenue home in October 1994.
At a hearing last month, Thompson testified that he told police that he didn't want to talk when they caught up with him in Texas several weeks after Green's death.
Although Thompson later ended up confessing to killing both Green and an elderly West Virginia man several months earlier, defense attorney Jonathan Apgar argued that those statements should be thrown out.
Once someone invokes his constitutional right not to talk to police, authorities are not allowed to reinitiate contact with him. A Florida detective did just that, Apgar argued, when he questioned Thompson a second time while taking his photograph for a lineup.
Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Greg Phillips had argued that Thompson willfully waived his rights and voluntarily made the statement.
"Just because someone says they don't want to talk doesn't mean they are forever unapproachable," Phillips said.
Thompson's traveling companion and former cellmate in West Virginia, 28-year-old David McKeone, has been convicted and sentenced to life in prison for his role in Green's murder and robbery.
Both men have been convicted of trying to kill a man in Florida several days after Green was murdered, and they also are charged in the West Virginia man's beating death.
LENGTH: Short : 44 lines KEYWORDS: ROMURby CNB