THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, November 4, 1996 TAG: 9611040048
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: 59 lines
Newly gathered affidavits strengthen the likelihood that if the state executes Joseph P. Payne Sr. on Thursday it will have given a lethal injection to the wrong man - which would be a somewhat irrevocable mistake, would it not?
That's a drawback in using the God-like power of capital punishment to dispatch the dead from among the quick. If they're later proved innocent, you can't bring 'em back alive.
Gov. Allen may wish to ponder - carefully, but swiftly - new evidence Payne's lawyers will present today to his staff in petitioning for clemency that would allow Payne life in prison. The governor had better, as they say on the street, cut Payne some slack and save the state from committing a miscarriage of justice.
Payne, who had been serving a term of life plus one year for a 1982 murder, was convicted of the 1985 slaying of David Wayne Dunford, a fellow inmate at the Powhatan Correctional Center. Someone threw paint thinner on Dunford and set him on fire. He died in nine days. No evidence linked Payne to the crime except the testimony of Robert Francis ``Dirty Smitty'' Smith Jr., who had 15 years cut from his 40-year sentence for his cooperation. He told jurors he had seen Payne start the fire in the cell.
Four other state witnesses had sentences reduced 10 years each. To tempt witnesses for the prosecution is a highly dubious practice.
If the state is to engage in angling among the prison population, it should extend the same incentives to witnesses for the defense. To do otherwise is to render Justice purblind. The state's concern should be to uncover the truth.
Payne's first, court-appointed lawyers offered a sole witness, Frank Clements, who said that he and Payne were in the shower when Dunford was attacked and that Smith joined them after the incident.
Among new affidavits in Payne's behalf, the murdered man's mother, Reba Inez Dunford, wrote while asking clemency: ``Too many people have come forward and said that Robert Smith lied about Joe Payne. I have doubts that Joe Payne killed my son. Joe Payne's execution will do nothing but hurt more people, including me.''
A juror, Phyllis Joan Forrester, said it was hard to believe many of the inmates testifying against Payne and said the jurors' decision ``was based on more of a gut feeling we all shared that he was guilty.'' Three other jurors said they would not have sent Payne to death row had they heard all the evidence.
State and federal courts have ignored Payne's protestations of innocence. In the face of mounting evidence, Gov. Allen can take a fresh, redemptive look.
Of his murder of a Prince William store owner, Payne told The Virginian-Pilot's Laura LaFay: ``I live with remorse every day.''
The advice to Gov. Allen that means the most came from Reba Inez Dunford: ``Please do not let this happen, Gov. Allen. I can think of no greater tragedy than killing an innocent man.'' ILLUSTRATION: Joseph P. Payne Sr. was sentenced to die for the 1985
murder of a fellow inmate. Now that inmate's mother says she doubts
that Payne killed her son. by CNB