ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, November 22, 1996 TAG: 9611220051
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: JARRATT
SOURCE: Associated Press
Ronald Bennett, denied clemency by Gov. George Allen and a last-minute stay by the U.S. Supreme Court, went silently to his death Thursday for the beating and strangulation of a woman in 1985.
Bennett, 42, was pronounced dead at 9:19 p.m. at Greensville Correctional Center. He was executed by injection.
Neither he nor any of his attorneys made a statement. Bennett's chief attorney, Don Lee, went into the death chamber with him but left before the execution was carried out.
Bennett entered the death chamber at 8:57 p.m. surrounded by eight officers who strapped him to a gurney. Bennett was asked if he had anything to say, and he said no, said Rufus Fleming, a Department of Corrections regional director.
At 9:13 p.m., six syringes of chemicals were loaded into two intravenous tubes - one in each of Bennett's arms. A moment later, Bennett's chest heaved twice, he fell still and never moved again.
Absent from the prison grounds on the cold, wet night were death penalty protesters who have turned out to hold vigils and pray at previous executions.
Seven hours before the execution, the Supreme Court voted 7-2 to let the execution proceed. Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg voted for a stay of execution.
Allen, after reviewing Bennett's case, said he concluded ``there is no convincing reason for me to prevent the judgment of the jury and judge from being carried out as scheduled. The evidence against Bennett is overwhelming.''
Bennett was convicted in 1987 of the slaying of Anne Keller Vaden. She was bound and strangled with pantyhose, bludgeoned and stabbed three times in the neck and once in the abdomen.
A medical examiner testified that Vaden, 28, was alive throughout the 20 to 30 minutes it took her attacker to beat her.
A year after the murder, Mary Bennett, Bennett's ex-wife, talked to a friend about the killing, and the friend tipped police.
Mary Bennett testified at the trial that she, her husband and Bennett's cousin had been drinking and using cocaine the night Vaden was killed.
She said Bennett, a maintenance man at Vaden's apartment complex, left them and was covered with blood when he returned home the next day. She testified that Bennett told her he had killed a woman at the apartment complex.
The cousin gave a similar version of events.
In a 1994 videotaped affidavit, Mary Bennett recanted her trial testimony, saying she lied to protect herself. She claimed that she and the cousin went out looking for Bennett and ended up at Vaden's apartment, and the cousin killed the woman.
In 1995, she told investigators that she lied in the affidavit to save Bennett. On Monday, she told Chesterfield police that Bennett asked her to make the tape. She said he wrote to her telling her what to say and that she made it after rehearsing.
Bennett's execution is the 33rd in Virginia since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstituted capital punishment in 1976.
LENGTH: Medium: 65 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: (headshot) Bennett. color. KEYWORDS: FATALITYby CNB