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Thread: Mark Eric Lawlor - Virginia

  1. #31
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    Va. man sentenced to death in 2011 gets new hearing, and new prosecutor agrees to life sentence

    Mark Lawlor admits he killed Genevieve Orange, but new prosecutor Steve T. Descano opposes capital punishment

    By Tom Jackman
    The Washington Post

    At his capital murder trial nine years ago, Mark E. Lawlor did not deny that he raped and murdered Genevieve P. Orange. A twice-convicted felon, he admitted that as a leasing agent for Orange’s apartment building in the Falls Church area, he used his keys to enter her apartment and then repeatedly bludgeoned her with a hammer and a frying pan. For the jury, there was only one issue: Should Lawlor be put to death?

    “Gini” Orange was 29, an event planner for the Futures Industry Association in the District and an active member of McLean Bible Church. Some of her friends from the church and Orange’s mother sat through every day of the eight-week trial, including the gruesome details of her slaying. They heard testimony about Lawlor’s horrific childhood and his lawyers’ claim that he was too intoxicated on crack cocaine and beer to form the intent needed for premeditated murder. A Fairfax County jury heard it, too, and sentenced Lawlor to die.

    But a federal appeals court ruled in 2018 that the judge in the case had wrongly prevented Lawlor’s lawyers from presenting evidence about Lawlor’s future dangerousness, a factor jurors must consider in death penalty cases. A new sentencing was ordered. And in the meantime, Fairfax County elected a new prosecutor who opposes the death penalty. So on Thursday, with the approval of new Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve T. Descano, Lawlor was resentenced to life without parole, agreeing to waive any rights to appeal or seek early release.

    Orange’s family favored the death penalty. “We would prefer he died before we died,” said Brenda O. Luper, Orange’s half sister. “That’s what Marilyn wanted,” she added, referring to Marilyn Orange, Gini Orange’s mother, who is now hospitalized in poor health at age 73 and did not attend the resentencing. “This has just really taken her life away. Gini meant everything to her. The sun rose and set with Gini.”

    The mother and daughter spoke every morning before Gini Orange went to work, and it was Marilyn Orange who sounded the alert when she could not reach her daughter on Sept. 25, 2008. Marilyn Orange could not be reached for comment Thursday.

    Descano campaigned last year on a platform of criminal justice reform, to include opposition to the death penalty. “I will not seek the death penalty — period, full stop,” he wrote in his “Progressive Justice” outline of his ideas. “The death penalty does not deter crime and is no more effective than life sentences at keeping the most dangerous individuals out of our communities.”

    Descano said Thursday that the life sentence for Lawlor “is a notable outcome because it exemplifies that our criminal justice system can seek justice, find resolution, and keep our community safe while adhering to our community’s values.” In Virginia, the law gives commonwealth’s attorneys full discretion over when to seek the death penalty and when to withdraw such intentions.

    Former Fairfax County commonwealth’s attorney Raymond F. Morrogh, who prosecuted Lawlor in 2008, sharply criticized the life sentence. He had intended to seek the death penalty again before he was defeated by Descano last year.

    “I believe that the twelve citizens on the jury who voted for the death penalty,” Morrogh said, “and the judge who imposed it were amply justified in light of the evidence and past criminal history of the defendant. … The crime was vile and inhuman. The sheer brutality and horror inflicted on this innocent woman places this crime and this defendant among the worst of the worst. … It’s a bad time for victims, justice and public safety.”

    Lawlor, 53, is the last person in Virginia to have received a death sentence. His resentencing leaves only two men on the state’s death row.

    Orange was born and raised in the Roanoke area, where her mother still lives. She graduated from Virginia Tech in 2001 with a marketing degree. She then moved to the Washington area, and wound up living in the Prestwick Apartments, now called the Jefferson Apartments, on Leesburg Pike in the Seven Corners area.

    Lawlor was born and raised in New Jersey, where his lawyers said his mother repeatedly beat and abused him, while his father molested and raped Lawlor’s sister. At 16, when he tried to stop his father from abusing his sister, his father marched him out of the house at gunpoint and ordered him to leave. His lawyers said he began drinking and using drugs, and after he moved to Virginia, he crashed a car while driving drunk and killed a friend. He was 18 and sent to prison.

    Court records show that Lawlor encountered the law again in 1998, when he began stalking an ex-fiancee in Great Falls. Police said he slid under her garage door one night as she arrived home, kicked her windshield repeatedly until he made a hole in it, then yanked her out of the car and placed her in his vehicle. The pair drove around Great Falls until she faked an asthma attack and Lawlor released her. He served five years in prison for abduction, and his ex-fiancee testified at the sentencing in his murder case in 2011.

    While in a recovery program after his second release from prison, Lawlor was placed at the Prestwick Apartments, where Fairfax County said it was leasing apartments for recovering addicts. Eventually, he became a leasing agent for the 310-unit, six story building where Orange was also a tenant.

    Trial testimony indicated that on Sept. 24, 2008, Lawlor and another man went on a day-long bender of voluminous crack smoking and beer drinking. Later that night, or early the next morning, Lawlor obtained a key to Orange’s apartment, entered and struck her 47 times with either a hammer or a frying pan, causing multiple skull fractures, autopsy records showed. DNA in semen found on Orange’s body linked Lawlor to the crime.

    After the jury convicted Lawlor of capital murder, they had to decide on a penalty of life in prison without parole or death. To win a death sentence, prosecutors in Virginia must prove either that the crime was so vile that it merited ultimate retribution or that the defendant poses a threat of future danger to society. Morrogh chose to prove both.

    But when defense lawyers Mark Petrovich and Thomas Walsh wanted to have an expert testify that Lawlor would not be a future danger in prison, Morrogh objected and Fairfax Circuit Court Judge Jonathan C. Thacher prevented it, saying the future danger testimony must be about all of society, not merely prison. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit ruled in November 2018 that Thacher was wrong and that it could have affected the jury’s decision. It ordered a resentencing.

    Fairfax Circuit Court Judge Randy I. Bellows took over the case. He asked Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney Jessica Greis Edwardson on Thursday whether Orange’s family had been consulted about the new agreement to seek a life sentence for Lawlor. “Their preference is death,” Edwardson said. But she told the judge that was not an option, because “the decision of Mr. Descano is that he was not willing to pursue the death penalty in this case.” Bellows acknowledged Descano’s authority and accepted the agreement to impose life sentences without parole on two counts: capital murder in the commission of rape and capital murder in the commission of abduction.

    “I just really want to apologize to the family,” Lawlor said. “I know those words are kind of empty. … What I did was a horrible, horrible thing. I took the life of a wonderful human being, and she’s gone, and I’m sorry for that.” He said, “If the family ever wants to meet with me, talk to me, get closure, I’m available. And again, I’m very sorry.”

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/crime...life-sentence/

  2. #32
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    It's pretty epic seeing that a prosecutor can have any standing sentence lowered on remand because they personally don't agree with it.

    LAW AND ORDER 101!
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

  3. #33
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Neil's Avatar
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    There needs to be cert by the Supreme Court on a future case like this. It’s pathetic

  4. #34
    Senior Member Frequent Poster schmutz's Avatar
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    The sentence was thrown out. Descano ran on a platform of not seeking the death penalty, so the voters got what they wanted.

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