ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, May 17, 1996 TAG: 9605170079
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: RICHMOND
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
A federal appeals court Thursday stayed Lem Tuggle's execution to give his lawyer time to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to hear an appeal.
Tuggle, the only surviving member of a six-prisoner gang that pulled off the largest death-row escape in U.S. history in 1984, had been scheduled for execution June 6.
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stayed Tuggle's execution until the Supreme Court acts on a request to hear the case. Tuggle's lawyer, Timothy Kaine, has until July 29 to file his petition.
Kaine said the deadline is based on a Supreme Court rule that requires the petition to be filed within 30 days of the appeals court's ruling denying a rehearing. That ruling was issued April 30.
Attorney General Jim Gilmore will ask the Supreme Court to vacate the stay and allow the execution to proceed, spokesman Mark Miner said. He said the request probably will be made within a week.
Thursday's ruling capped a confusing flurry of legal maneuverings in the case. On May 8, the appeals court stayed for 30 days its mandate to carry out the execution - a ruling the court considered tantamount to a stay of execution.
The state asked the U.S. Supreme Court to vacate the stay. But Chief Justice William Rehnquist ruled Thursday that no such stay existed.
``When Tuggle asked the Court of Appeals both to stay his execution and to stay issuance of its mandate in his case, the Court of Appeals order only stayed the issuance of its mandate for a period of 30 days,'' Rehnquist wrote. ``Hence there is no stay of execution for me to vacate.''
The attorney general's office interpreted the ruling as meaning the June 6 execution could proceed.
``This is extremely strange,'' Kaine said. ``The date was on, then off, then on, then off. I don't know if it's over yet.''
Kaine said Thursday's ruling accomplished what the appeals court intended to do last week, which was to give him time to ask the Supreme Court to hear the case.
Tuggle was convicted of capital murder for the 1983 rape and killing of Jessie Geneva Havens, 52, in Smyth County. Havens and Tuggle had met at a dance. She was shot in the chest and thrown down an embankment.
The crime occurred four months after Tuggle was paroled from a sentence he was serving for the 1971 murder of a 17-year-old girl.
Tuggle and five other death row inmates escaped from the Mecklenburg Correctional Center in 1984 after posing as guards. All six were recaptured within a month. The other five have been executed.
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