THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, February 4, 1997 TAG: 9702040274
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WOODBRIDGE LENGTH: 52 lines
Michael Carl George, convicted and sentenced to die in the torture slaying of a 15-year-old boy, will be executed this week unless the U.S. Supreme Court or Gov. George Allen intervene.
George, 39, of Stafford County, was convicted of capital murder in the June 16, 1990, slaying of Alexander Eugene Sztanko in Prince William County. A jury found George guilty of abducting the boy as he rode a motorcycle along a dirt power line trail in Woodbridge.
According to testimony at George's trial, Sztanko was sexually assaulted and robbed before being shot in the head. Police believe George used a stun gun to shock the boy's genitals.
In an appeal petition and stay request filed last week with the U.S. Supreme Court, attorney Stephen Northrup argued that prosecutor Paul Ebert's comments about the crime's impact on the victim's parents was improper before the jury had issued a verdict.
Northrup also said he would ask Allen for clemency.
Attila Sztanko, the father of the victim, was bitter that George's execution is to come by lethal injection - and after the inmate gets to say goodbye to his family.
``He will be able to have prayers said. And then he's going to have a very easy way of leaving this Earth,'' Sztanko said. ``Alex didn't have all that.''
The execution is slated for 9 p.m. Thursday at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt. If it is carried out, George's case would be one of the quickest to reach a conclusion since Virginia resumed death sentences in the early 1980s.
One reason involves appeal case reforms in state and federal courts, said Mark Miner, a spokesman for Attorney General James S. Gilmore III.
Under the reforms, appeals move faster because judges impose a time limit for the next step to be filed, Miner said. The state reforms were implemented in July 1995, and the federal changes soon followed.
``They're not losing any amount of appeals,'' Miner said. ``They're just having dates set into their appeals process. No longer should the appeals take 10 to 12 years. Now it will be three to four years.''
Of the 49 men on death row, 15 have been there longer than George.
Before the Sztanko slaying, George pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and abduction in the May 1979 disappearance of 8-year-old Larry Perry, who lived near the same power line where the Sztanko boy was killed.
George originally was charged with the Perry boy's murder, but authorities agreed to the manslaughter plea because the victim's body was never found. George served two years of a five-year sentence before being released in 1986 on mandatory parole.
KEYWORDS: DEATH ROW