ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, April 23, 1997 TAG: 9704230063
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: BEDFORD
SOURCE: JOANNE POINDEXTER THE ROANOKE TIMES
Judge William Sweeney said Soering did not prove that prosecutors withheld evidence that his attorney could have used to prove his innocence.
Jens Soering's right to a fair trial was not violated in 1990, when he was convicted of the murder of his former girlfriend's parents, a Bedford County circuit judge has ruled.
Judge William Sweeney, in a written opinion released Tuesday, said Soering did not prove that prosecutors withheld evidence that his attorney could have used to prove his innocence.
Soering is serving two life sentences for the 1985 murder of Derek and Nancy Haysom at their Boonsboro home.
Soering, the son of a German diplomat, was convicted on two counts of first-degree murder. The Haysoms' daughter and Soering's girlfriend, Elizabeth Haysom, pleaded guilty as an accessory before the fact and was sentenced to 90 years in prison.
Soering's defense was that Elizabeth Haysom or possibly someone else killed her parents and that he confessed to the murders to protect her, thinking he could get a lighter sentence in a German court.
Soering appealed in 1996, contending that prosecutors didn't tell defense attorneys about a sheriff's deputy's suspicion that a pair of drifters might have played a role in the Haysom murders. The drifters were convicted of a stabbing death that occurred in Roanoke about a week after the Haysoms were killed.
Prosecutors did not have to give the defense evidence about the Roanoke slaying, because it had no connection to the Haysom case, the ruling said.
The two cases, the judge said, had no connections except that Roanoke's two suspects had been stopped in Bedford County earlier and both were stabbing cases.
A knife was found in the deputy's cruiser after the drifters were stopped, and the deputy said he believed it belonged to one of the drifters. A medical examiner testified that such a knife could have been used to kill the Haysoms.
"It seems to me [Sweeney's finding] is contrary to the weight of the evidence the court had before it in December," said Soering's attorney, Gail Marshall.
She maintains the evidence about the drifters' whereabouts and the knife could have cast reasonable doubt about Soering's guilt.
"Judge Sweeney's decision was consistent with what the commonwealth's position has been all along - that no evidence was withheld," said Randy Krantz, Bedford County commonwealth's attorney. "Mr. Soering's attorney did not present sufficient evidence to show anything to the contrary."
The findings will be sent to the Virginia Supreme Court, which had sent the case back to Sweeney.
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