DATE: Monday, June 30, 1997                 TAG: 9706300043

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B7   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS 

DATELINE: RICHMOND                          LENGTH:   61 lines

FOUR WHO WERE SPARED FROM VIRGINIA DEATH ROW ARE NOW A PART OF SOCIETY IN 1972, THE SUPREME COURT OUTLAWED EXECUTIONS, SAVING THESE MEN'S LIVES.

Cecil Wood Jr. remembers the day 25 years ago when he and 11 other condemned prisoners in Virginia were spared the death sentence by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that outlawed capital punishment.

``We all stood up on the table,'' Wood told the Richmond Times-Dispatch in a story published Sunday. ``And there was jumpin' around and . . . throwing up both hands and hugging each other and carrying on.''

Wood's reprieve didn't mean he would go free, but for others once convicted of crimes so vile the sanction was to have been death, the ruling in Furman vs. Georgia meant they would be allowed to rejoin society.

Four of the 12 in Virginia since have been freed:

Elly Jo Huggins, 48, convicted of murder in Newport News in 1971, now lives in Richmond, where he's been on parole since Sept. 25, 1990.

Bernard Ross Fogg, 52, convicted on rape, robbery and abduction charges in Norfolk in 1967, was paroled Oct. 9, 1987. He lives in another state.

Barry Clinton Johnson, 56, convicted of the 1966 murder of a woman in Gloucester County, was paroled Sept. 6, 1995. He lives in another state.

Elvin Brickhouse Jr., 51, was sentenced to 650 years in prison for rape, but was paroled in 1987. He has since been discharged from parole and now lives completely free, his whereabouts unknown to Virginia authorities.

The high court ruled in 1972 that capital punishment was cruel and unusual punishment in part because of the manner it was imposed from state to state. One justice likened the imposition of the death sentence to being struck by lightning.

Four years later, the court ruled rewritten capital punishment laws in Texas, Georgia and Florida were constitutional because the laws provided safeguards such as a separate sentencing phase. Eventually, 37 states, including Virginia, rewrote their laws to conform to the new ruling. Executions resumed in 1977.

A 1989 study in the Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review said that of the 558 death sentences commuted by the Furman decision, 243 had been paroled. Of those, 191 - 78.6 percent - apparently were living as law-abiding citizens.

One of the Virginia prisoners who was spared died of natural causes while in confinement, and another said he would have preferred death to a life behind bars. For those set free, though, life has been challenging.

Huggins declined the newspapers' request for comment, saying he feared news coverage of his past would make his future more difficult.

``I make my own luck,'' he told the newspaper.

Fogg has stayed out of trouble since his release, the newspaper said. Johnson has too, at least this time around.

First paroled in 1982, Johnson wound up back in prison three years later after he was involved in a fatal car crash and fled. He was driving without a license at the time, and authorities tracked him down in Kentucky.

Now, he said, the support of family has helped him in his transition. That, and a little bit of discretion in what he tells people.

``I'm working. A laborer,'' he told the newspaper. ``I don't tell anybody that I'm on parole. Because when you do that, that's when somebody's going to try and provoke you and treat you differently.'' KEYWORDS: DEATH ROW COMMUTED SENTENCE VIRGINIA

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