THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, August 23, 1996 TAG: 9608230112
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B9 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: 60 lines
A divided federal appeals court Thursday reinstated the death sentence of a man convicted of capital murder in the 1985 rape and stabbing of a Petersburg woman.
In a 2-1 decision, a panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed U.S. District Judge Robert R. Merhige Jr.'s ruling that police suppressed important evidence in the trial of Ronald Lee Hoke.
Another divided appeals panel upheld the death sentence of Gregory Warren Beaver, who shot and killed a state trooper during a traffic stop on Interstate 95 in Prince George County in 1985.
A Petersburg Circuit Court jury convicted Hoke of killing 56-year-old Virginia E. Stell. Hoke was a drifter from Hagerstown, Md., who met Stell at a Petersburg restaurant.
Merhige ruled last September that Hoke was denied a fair trial because police suppressed evidence that the victim was ``aggressively promiscuous.''
Merhige said that evidence might have convinced the jury that Stell had sex with Hoke voluntarily.
The appeals court disagreed.
``Stell was found murdered in the position in which she was sodomized, with her wrists and ankles bound, with her mouth gagged, with contusions on her arms. . . . In our judgment, the mere fact that this middle-aged, single woman had had consensual intercourse on several occasions in the past could not possibly create a reasonable doubt as to whether Stell was raped by Hoke,'' Judge Michael Luttig wrote.
He was joined in the opinion by Judge Donald S. Russell.
In a dissenting opinion, Judge Kenneth K. Hall said the jury should have been allowed to hear the evidence about the victim's sexual history.
``Had the jury known of Stell's aggressive promiscuity . . . it is at least `reasonably probable' that the result would have been different,'' he wrote.
Hoke's lawyer, Gerald T. Zerkin of Charlottesville, said he will ask for a rehearing before the full appeals court. He declined further comment.
Mark Miner, a spokesman for state Attorney General James S. Gilmore III, also refused to comment on the ruling.
In the Prince George case, the appeals court, in another 2-1 ruling, rejected Beaver's claim that his attorney, T.O. Rainey III, had a conflict of interest because he also worked as a part-time prosecutor in neighboring Dinwiddie County.
Judge H. Emory Widener Jr. and Luttig ruled that Beaver failed to demonstrate that Rainey's performance was adversely affected by his part-time job. Rainey did not have a working relationship with any of the witnesses in the case, the court said.
In a dissenting opinion, Hall wrote that once a conflict of interest is established, it can be assumed that the lawyer was ineffective.
``Though the act that Beaver is accused of committing is a particularly evil one, he should not be compelled to face that most final of judgments without ever having had the assistance of a lawyer whose loyalty is beyond question,'' Hall wrote.
Rainey is now Dinwiddie County commonwealth's attorney.
KEYWORDS: APPEAL DEATH SENTENCE by CNB