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Thread: Alfredo Rolando Prieto - Virginia Execution - October 1, 2015

  1. #111
    SJette
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    Your mom and sister are stronger than they will ever know. As I told your sister, I and my family are here for anything you guys may need. Love to all!

  2. #112
    Moderator Ryan's Avatar
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    Triple murderer Alfredo Prieto is executed in Virginia

    By Tom Jackman
    The Washington Post

    JARRATT, Va. — Alfredo Rolando Prieto, convicted of two murders in Fairfax County, one in California and linked by DNA and ballistics to six more, was executed by lethal injection Thursday night at the Greensville Correctional Center here.

    Prieto, 49, was pronounced dead at 9:17 p.m. “I would like to say thanks to all my lawyers, all my supporters and all my family members,” Prieto said. “Get this over with.”

    The short statement represented just about the only words Prieto has ever said publicly since he was caught 25 years ago. He never spoke to detectives investigating his crimes, did not testify during any of his four trials and never gave an interview. In one hearing in Fairfax in 2010, he told a judge that “I was using a lot of drugs. I was drinking” at the time of his Northern Virginia crimes in 1988.

    Prieto’s death was witnessed by Deidre Raver of Yorktown, N.Y., the sister of Rachael A. Raver, who was 22 when she was shot in the back in a vacant lot near Reston. She had watched Prieto fatally shoot her boyfriend, Warren H. Fulton III, in the back while on his knees, law enforcement authorities have said. Investigators believe that Raver ran but that Prieto chased her down, shot her and raped her as she lay dying.

    “Today ends a long and painful ordeal for my family,” Deidre Raver said, “that has haunted us for over 26 years. I speak on behalf of my sister, Rachael Angelica, who will have the last word after all. . . . Although we have moved on with our lives, there will always be that gap in our hearts knowing we could not be there to rescue our beloved sister or brother. . . . Today is about the victims having the last word and recognizing that we would never forget them or what happened.”

    Fulton’s parents were unable to attend. Raver’s parents died in recent years.

    It was the first execution in Virginia since January 2013 and the first by lethal injection since August 2011. Prieto’s attorneys tried a late appeal for a stay by challenging one of the three drugs used to execute him, which Virginia obtained from Texas in August. But earlier Thursday, U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson denied the request for a postponement.

    Prieto had spent the last quarter-century of his life behind bars. Prior to that, he did a two-year stint as a teenager for a drive-by shooting in California. And in between those two prison stays, police believe, he fatally shot four people — raping two of them — in Virginia, then returned to California and shot and killed five people, also raping two of them.

    In seeking to persuade a Fairfax jury to impose a death sentence on him, Fairfax Commonwealth’s Attorney Raymond F. Morrogh said in 2010, “Anyone who would commit crimes this dastardly, amoral and inhuman is someone who poses a threat to society.”

    Morrogh was a witness to the execution, as was his chief deputy, Casey Lingan, and former Fairfax homicide detective Robert Murphy, who investigated the Raver and Fulton cases.

    Prieto was one of six children born to Arnoldo and Teodora Prieto in San Martin, El Salvador. His traumatic upbringing in the war-torn country was the centerpiece of his defense at his three trials in Fairfax: two which argued that the experience left him mentally retarded and one which said the experience mitigated against giving him the death penalty.

    Prieto immigrated legally to California in 1981 at age 15 to live with his mother. After injuring three people in a drive-by shooting in Ontario, Calif., Prieto served two years in prison, then in 1987 moved to Arlington, where his father lived. It was there, in May 1988, that police think he abducted, raped and shot Tina Jefferson. The only evidence in the case was DNA in semen left behind.

    Similarly, in December 1988, there was only DNA from semen that connected Prieto to the shooting deaths of Raver and Fulton. His attorneys argued that there was no proof of who fired the fatal shots in any of the cases. Prieto never testified to offer his version.

    Police said they believe that Manuel F. Sermeno, 27, may have witnessed Prieto commit another uncertain crime and that Prieto shot him to death in September 1989. Prieto then set Sermeno’s car on fire along Interstate 95 near Triangle, law enforcement authorities said.

    Soon after, Prieto moved back to Ontario, Calif., and a trail of tragedy ensued. In May 1990, 19-year-old Stacey Siegrist and 21-year-old Tony Gianuzzi were found shot to death in nearby Rubidoux, Calif, according to law enforcement officials. Again, only semen was left as evidence, according to court testimony.

    Less than a month later, Lula and Herbert Farley were assaulted in broad daylight as they rummaged for cans near an Ontario shopping center, according to court papers. Horrified shoppers, including some children, saw a man shoot Lula Farley, 71, and drive away with Herbert Farley, 65, who was later found shot to death, according to police. Only a ballistics match with Prieto’s gun, many years later, solved that crime, although Riverside County, Calif., prosecutors decided not to charge Prieto because he had received death sentences elsewhere.

    Finally, back in Ontario, Prieto and two other men abducted three women at gunpoint one night, drove them across the city and then to a vacant lot, where all three women were raped, according to the police. Prieto then shot one of them, 15-year-old Yvette Woodruff. The other women survived and identified their attackers, and Prieto was finally arrested in September 1990, convicted and sentenced to death there in 1992.

    Stephanie Jette, a close friend of Woodruff’s, said “this whole community was messed up” by her slaying. “This little 98-pound waif never hurt anybody. She was always very well put together, and her giggle was infectious. The world lost something very special when she was taken away from us.”

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/local...919_story.html

  3. #113
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    This is good news.

  4. #114
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    Has some info that wasn't in the Washington Post article

    Virginia executes 1st inmate in nearly 3 years


    JARRATT, Va. (AP) — A convicted serial killer who faced the death penalty in two states became the first inmate to be executed in nearly three years in Virginia.

    Alfredo Prieto was pronounced dead at 9:17 p.m. Thursday at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt. The 49-year-old was injected with a lethal three-drug combination, including the sedative pentobarbital, which Virginia received from the Texas prison system.

    Virginia has long been among the most prolific death penalty states, but had not put an inmate to death since January 2013 before this week.

    Prieto's execution remained uncertain until hours before it was scheduled to take place as his lawyers made a flurry of last-minute attempts to spare his life. But attorneys for the state urged the courts to let the death sentence be carried out to help the family members of Prieto's victims find justice.

    "It is time for this to end," Margaret O'Shea, a lawyer from Attorney General Mark Herring's office, said Thursday. "It is time for the carousel to end."

    Prieto looked calm as he entered the execution chamber at 8:53 p.m. The warden stepped behind the curtain at 9:09 p.m. and shortly afterward officials began administering the drugs. Prieto's chest rose and fell several times but he made no sounds. He was motionless after a few minutes.

    Wearing glasses, jeans and a light blue shirt, he did not resist and showed no emotion as he was strapped to the gurney.

    "I would like to say thanks to all my lawyers, all my supporters and all my family members," he said, before mumbling, "Get this over with."

    The El Salvador native was sentenced to death in Virginia in 2010 for the murder of a young couple more than two decades earlier. Rachael Raver and her boyfriend, Warren Fulton III, both 22, were found shot to death in a wooded area a few days after being seen at a Washington, D.C., nightspot.

    Prieto was on death row in California at the time for raping and murdering a 15-year-old girl and was linked to the Virginia slayings through DNA evidence. California officials agreed to send him to Virginia on the rationale that it was more likely to carry out the execution.

    He has been connected to as many as six other killings in California and Virginia, authorities have said, but he was never prosecuted because he had already been sentenced to death.

    Virginia's lethal injection protocol calls for the use of pentobarbital, a sedative, at the beginning of the execution. That's followed by rocuronium bromide, which halts an inmate's breathing, and potassium chloride, which stops the heart.

    Prieto's attorneys filed a lawsuit Wednesday seeking to halt the execution until Virginia officials disclose more information about the supply of pentobarbital, which Virginia received from Texas because another sedative it planned to use expired. They said they were concerned about the quality of the drugs and they fear that they will cause a cruel and painful death.

    But U.S. District Court Judge Henry E. Hudson lifted a temporary order blocking Prieto's execution on Thursday, saying Prieto's lawyers had not adequately shown that the drugs are unsafe. He said unwarranted delay of the execution would be harmful for those victimized by Prieto's crimes, a harm "magnified here by the appalling number of people that Prieto has killed, raped, or otherwise injured."

    Prieto had also asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene, saying he's intellectually disabled, and therefore ineligible for the death penalty. But the high court declined to grant his requests to stay the execution Thursday.

    His attorneys argued that the state should reconsider whether Prieto is intellectually disabled because the measure used during his 2008 trial was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court ruled last year that Florida can't use rigid cutoffs on IQ test scores to determine whether someone is intellectually disabled. Virginia had a nearly identical law.

    "The Commonwealth had the opportunity to correct that error, and chose not to," Attorney Rob Lee said in a statement after the execution. "Our nation prohibits the execution of persons with intellectual disability; in this case, the state was unwilling to ensure that protection was honored before carrying out its harshest penalty."

    http://www.bostonherald.com/news_opi...nearly_3_years

  5. #115
    Moderator Dave from Florida's Avatar
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    California officials agreed to send Prieto to Virginia because it was "more likely" the execution would take place. If that isn't the understatement of the year.

  6. #116
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    The execution of Alfredo Prieto: Witnessing a serial killer’s final moments

    By Tom Jackman
    The Washington Post

    JARRATT, Va. — It is undeniably disturbing to drive to the scheduled killing of another. A hurricane brewing in the distance, slicing steady rain through the gray day. The first song on the car radio: “Enter Sandman,” by Metallica. Passing the old Lorton prison on the way out of Fairfax County.

    But the state of Virginia handles the execution of convicted murderers in a precise and professional way. Similarly, serial killer Alfredo R. Prieto lived the final moments of his life with his own version of professionalism, maintaining the same passive look he held through his three long trials in Fairfax, and defiantly refusing to show any remorse or regret as he issued a rehearsed final statement similar to a pro athlete being interviewed after a game. He thanked his “supporters” and then snapped, “Get it over with.”

    [“Today ends a long and painful ordeal."]

    They did. He entered the death chamber at 8:52 p.m. Thursday, and was dead by 9:17 p.m. A diverse crowd of witnesses watched every moment intently, some in the chamber with him, some victims’ family members and friends in a room peering through one-way glass, and then about 18 more people — lawyers, corrections officials, and four reporters including me — facing him straight on from another room. We watched what appeared to be an utterly painless death for a man who brutally killed nine people and devastated nine families, and here is how it unfolded:

    3 p.m.: Six hours before Prieto’s scheduled execution, there is a court order in place postponing it, and no one knows whether the execution will happen. In Richmond, lawyers are arguing about whether the first drug used in Virginia’s lethal injection process will cause undue pain to Prieto. When they are done, U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson doesn’t immediately issue a ruling. The execution remains in limbo.

    At Greensville Correctional Center in southern Virginia, visitor logs show that Prieto is visited by his mother, Teodora Alvarado, his sister Yolanda Loucel, his brother Guillermo Prieto, all from Pomona, Calif.; and a Catholic prison chaplain, the Rev. Richard Mooney from Petersburg. It’s not clear whether Prieto’s family stayed for the execution. Mooney would come in and take a seat in the main witness room minutes before the execution started, but would not say whether Prieto asked to be absolved of his sins.

    6 p.m.: Judge Hudson lifts the stay on the execution, ruling that Prieto’s lawyers had not shown that the drug pentobarbital would cause him pain. One of the lawyers who argued his case in Richmond, Elizabeth Peiffer, also joins us in the witness room, sitting next to Mooney.

    7 p.m.: Various groups arrive at the prison in Jarratt, Va., just off Interstate 95 and 20 miles north of the North Carolina line. Deidre and Matt Raver, the sister and brother of 22-year-old murder victim Rachael Raver, are present as is Velda Jefferson, the mother of 24-year-old murder victim Tina Jefferson. Several relatives and family friends join them. No relatives of the five people slain by Prieto in California are present, though they are following the news online.

    Also arriving is Ray Morrogh, the Fairfax County prosecutor who co-chaired the first Prieto trial with then Fairfax prosecutor Robert Horan, along with his chief deputy Casey Lingan, who assisted in the second and third Prieto trials. They are joined by retired Detective Bob Murphy, who was a Fairfax cold case detective in 2005 when the word came in that a DNA hit on two unsolved homicides from 1988 had linked a prisoner in California — Prieto — to the deaths of Raver, her boyfriend Warren Fulton, and Jefferson. Morrogh and Lingan take seats in the front row along with the jury foreman from the second Prieto trial, who wanted to express his support for the victims but did not want to be identified. They will sit about six feet from Prieto, as they did at the trials, when Prieto wore high-collared shirts to hide his gang tattoos, and hid his shackled ankles under a tablecloth spread over the defense table.

    8 p.m.: Of the four media witnesses, Frank Green of the Richmond Times-Dispatch and Brent Epperson of WBRG radio in Lynchburg are veterans of the process, having seen multiple executions. They are joined by Alanna Durkin of the AP, seeing her first, and me, having witnessed one previous lethal injection in Missouri. We are given a briefing of how things are expected to go. We are told that Prieto had a final meal but asked that its contents not be revealed. It is noted that he can only request food available from the prison kitchen, no steaks or extravagances from the outside.

    [A timeline of Prieto’s crimes]

    As we take vans from one building to another, the rain keeps pounding down, and the night gets progressively gloomier. As is usual on an execution night in most prisons, the general population, which is more than 3,000 here, is on lockdown, so the ambient racket is minimal. Guards in rain gear are everywhere, and everyone’s movements are closely tracked by radio traffic. There is chatter about the arrival of the secretary of public safety, former assistant Arlington prosecutor Brian Moran. He will join us soon in the witness room.

    8:45 p.m.: We are led to the witness room, about 15 feet wide with four tiered levels of plastic chairs facing a large pane of glass. Beyond that, the death chamber, and an empty white gurney with supports jutting out on either side for the patient’s arms. We have been told that Prieto is in a cell adjacent to the death chamber. Morrogh, Lingan and the jury foreman are in the front row. A big sign above the glass window declares, “Media Must Be Seated in Rear of the Room.” So we are.

    8:50 p.m.:
    A thick, anxious silence fills the room. We are all staring at the empty gurney. The electric chair is apparently nearby, and ready, but Prieto chose lethal injection.

    8:53 p.m.: Prieto emerges from his cell, handcuffed and shackled, surrounded by six guards. He is somewhat heavier than when we last saw him in Fairfax in 2010, and his hair is thinner. He is wearing glasses, a blue work shirt, blue work pants and sandals with no socks. The guards lift him on to the gurney, remove the cuffs, and then place two leather straps across his chest, two more straps across his legs, one around each ankle, and then strap down each hand.

    8:55 p.m.:
    A curtain in front of our window is closed so that medical personnel cannot be seen placing intravenous tubes into each arm and a heart monitor on his chest.

    9:03 p.m.: The curtain is still closed. Moran receives word that the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals has rejected an appeal of Judge Hudson’s ruling from 6 p.m.

    9:07 p.m.: The curtain is still closed. It’s been 12 minutes. Is something wrong? Can they not find a vein? I look at Frank Green. He shakes his head knowingly. This is standard. Mooney is reading his Bible. The silence is suffocating.

    9:08 p.m.: The curtain opens. Prieto’s arms are extended onto the supports, IV tubes in both forearms. A prison official asks if he has any last words and holds a microphone down to him. He is fully strapped down, but raises his head slightly to say quickly: “I would like to say thanks to all my lawyers, all my supporters and all my family members. Get this over with.” We can’t hear the last part because the audio in our room is unclear, but prison officials taped it and listened to it several times to get it exactly right.

    9:09 p.m.: Prieto lies back, and there is no more sound. His face is emotionless, not sad or fearful or angry. The only movement is his chest heaving. He is presumably receiving the dose of compounded pentobarbital, blamed in the extended pain episodes experienced by inmates elsewhere. Now it is really quiet.

    9:12 p.m.: A guard stands by Prieto’s head, watching his chest still moving. There are two more guards to Prieto’s right, and three correctional officials standing by a wall to his left, including Harold W. Clarke, the state director of the Department of Corrections. Clarke is holding a red phone connected to the governor’s office, but he is not talking. No one is talking. We are watching for any sign of life. Or death.

    9:13 p.m.:
    A guard moves to Prieto’s feet, takes off his sandals and pinches Prieto’s feet. We learned in the Richmond hearing that this is done to see if the first drug has effectively sedated the prisoner. Prieto doesn’t move. The pentobarbital has made him unconscious without incident.

    9:15 p.m.: Prieto does not appear to be breathing. He should have received a second drug to stop his lungs, and then a third drug to stop his heart.

    9:17 p.m.: Warden Eddie L. Pearson emerges from a curtain behind Prieto and announces, “The Fairfax County court order has been carried out at 9:17 p.m.” Prieto is dead.

    9:18 p.m.: The curtain closes. We are soon ushered out.

    9:50 p.m.: Prieto’s body is taken by ambulance to the medical examiner’s office in Richmond. He is gone.

    I first met Dede Raver in 2000, 12 years after her sister was killed in Reston. A DNA match had been made with Tina Jefferson’s slaying in Arlington, but there was still no suspect. Raver would become active in pushing for more funding for DNA use in crime fighting, and now it is everywhere. And now, her sister’s killer had been caught, convicted and put to death.

    “To me, the whole thing is so surreal,” she said late Thursday night. “It’s lasted so long, it’s hard to believe it’s come to an end.”

    She said of Prieto: “I did not see any emotion in him. It kind of haunts me because I kind of know that’s the expression my sister saw. I found it absolutely disturbing.” She did not expect him to apologize or offer condolences. “But I’m glad that I went,” she said, “because my mother really wanted to. [Veronica Raver, who attended all three Prieto trials in Fairfax despite suffering from stomach cancer, died in 2013.] So I did it on her behalf.”

    It was Ray Morrogh’s third time witnessing an execution, which he felt was only right as a prosecutor who sometimes seeks the death penalty. “I thought Prieto died a much easier death than any of his victims,” he said. “He passed very quietly. The way he was administered the lethal injection and went to sleep, I’ve seen family and friends struggle to the last heartbeat. His death was a lot easier than those women who begged for their lives.”

    From the back row, Prieto’s death was the culmination of a sad 15-year journey, starting with speaking to the Ravers and the Jeffersons when their daughters’ cases were first linked in 2000. Then in 2005, I learned from excited cold case detectives Murphy and Steve Milefsky that they had a break in the unsolved 17-year-old double killing. Prieto would soon enter Virginia as he would leave it, in cuffs.

    In 2006, I waited outside Fairfax police headquarters for Prieto to arrive from California late one night, and asked him, “How will you plead?” He looked at me and said without missing a beat, “Not guilty.” I sat with the Ravers, Fultons and Jeffersons through three long, painful capital murder trials from 2007 to 2010. Not once did Prieto rise to proclaim his own innocence or deny the charges, though he had two of Virginia’s best defense attorneys, Peter Greenspun and Jonathan Shapiro, raising mental deficiency and every other argument in hopes of saving his life. I once filed my own motion to get a camera in the courtroom, horrifying Post lawyers, which Judge Randy I. Bellows graciously allowed me to argue. (Denied.) I took one last shot and wrote to Prieto last month asking for an interview. (No reply.)

    But Morrogh and countless others are right that the muted process of lethal injection seems disproportionate to the violent horror that brought us here. The clinical professionalism of the execution is the government’s compromise between those who would stage public hangings and those who would abolish the death penalty. In the end, as with most compromises, neither side feels truly satisfied.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...final-moments/
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  7. #117
    ddrr
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    Thank you for the support we received last week while we wondered up to the last minute if we would have to deal with Prieto for the rest of our lives. I felt like my sister spoke from the grave. We were very lucky, Virginia took care of us and many people supported us but trust me, it was close. The media incorrectly reported that there was a stay, there never was. All we had was a hearing that was cancelled and then the original judge took the hearing about the drugs. The Supreme Court did not rule the day after, they officially refused to hear the last minute appeal. Period. NO merit. I feel for the families in Oklahoma and other states where the elected officials caved into pressure and postponed or stalled the cases. This is an outrage and families have a right to know if there cases will not result in the death sentences so they can live their own lives.
    Dede

    - - - Updated - - -

    Absolutely.

    - - - Updated - - -

    This is a relief.

  8. #118
    Senior Member Frequent Poster elsie's Avatar
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    Bless you and your family. Justice for all.
    Proverbs 21:15 "When justice is done, it is a joy to the righteous but terror to evil doers."

  9. #119
    Senior Member CnCP Addict TrudieG's Avatar
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    dd, I hope your sister is now at peace and I pray that you and your family can now move on in peace knowing Prieto cannot hurt you anymore knowing that justice was served. I hope now when you think of your sister it is with happy memories of her not the horror Prieto inflicted and continued to inflict while alive. May God bless you and your family.

  10. #120
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    Down to the wire on death row: Amid court pleas, execution was kept on schedule

    By FRANK GREEN
    The Richmond Times-Dispatch

    His crimes were horrific and there was no hint of innocence or remorse. Alfredo Prieto had been denied clemency and his appeals turned down before his last words Oct. 1 at at 9:08 p.m.: “Get this over with.”

    The commonwealth of Virginia complied and Prieto was pronounced dead at 9:17 p.m. in an execution that is apparently the first in modern state history carried out while a request for a stay was pending in the U.S. Supreme Court.

    Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s office was notified at 9:05 p.m. that the stay application was being filed and he could have, as have other governors, delayed proceedings until the Supreme Court ruled — a red telephone receiver held by a prison official inside the execution chamber kept open a direct line to the governor’s office. McAuliffe, under no obligation to hold things up, did not.

    Barry A. Weinstein, a former director of the Virginia Capital Representation Resource Center, conceded Prieto’s chances for a stay appeared slim and agreed that without a stay in place the execution could proceed. Nevertheless, he was surprised the governor did not wait.

    “Let’s assume the Supreme Court would have ruled in favor of Prieto’s stay and he had been executed — someone’s going to answer for it,” said Weinstein, now a lawyer in Georgia. “You just never know when five justices are going to vote for a stay.”

    Former Virginia governors, attorneys general and defense lawyers contacted recently could not recall another case where a stay application was pending at the time of execution and noted that some executions were held up waiting for the high court to rule on a request. But they said the hours leading up to an execution are difficult for all parties and that it is up to each governor to decide how to handle matters.

    “It probably would have just delayed them 30 minutes to an hour,” said George Allen, governor from 1994 to 1998 and in office for 22 executions. He said the Supreme Court is usually alerted ahead of time when executions are imminent and these situations may develop.

    Allen said he was not familiar with the details of Prieto’s case and intends no criticism of McAuliffe. “This is a very personal decision,” Allen said.

    Allen noted that McAuliffe, a Roman Catholic, allowed the court’s sentence to be carried out just after the U.S. visit by Pope Francis, who spoke against the death penalty.

    “Now, it might have been slightly different from the way we did it,” Allen said of Prieto’s execution. But, he said, “I know Governor McAuliffe’s faith and I know he deeply respects the pope and he went forward and did his (civil) duty,” Allen said. “You can argue over this nuanced aspect of it but, in a broader sense, I commend him for doing his duty.”

    The Virginia attorney general’s office, which had staff inside the execution chamber and in Richmond and was dealing with the courts on behalf of the state, was not notified by the Supreme Court about the stay application until 9:13 p.m., well after the execution started.

    Spokesmen would not comment on whether the governor’s office alerted the attorney general’s office about the stay application prior to 9:13 p.m. But the attorney general’s office said Prieto’s lawyers did not advise them about going to the Supreme Court.

    The drugs did not start flowing into Prieto via IVs until after his last statement at 9:08 p.m. The Virginia Department of Corrections, whose execution team carried out the procedure at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt, was not told there was a stay application pending, a department spokeswoman said.

    Many details of what transpired that night are not known. But emails obtained under a Virginia Freedom of Information Act request by the Richmond Times-Dispatch suggest that at least one official at the attorney general’s office and a Supreme Court clerk were caught short by developments.

    At 9:07 p.m., Alice Armstrong, a senior assistant attorney general working in Richmond, sent an email to Kyle R. Ratliff, emergency applications clerk for the U.S. Supreme Court, attaching the appeals court order. That was seven minutes after the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Prieto’s stay request, a minute after IV lines were placed in his arms, and a minute before he made his last statement.

    At 9:13 p.m., Ratliff replied: “Received, thank you. Prieto has filed a stay application with this Court ... I assume the state plans to file a response?”

    Armstrong replied at 9:15 p.m., “Yes. I will send shortly.”

    “OK, thanks Alice,” Ratliff said at 9:15 p.m.

    At 9:20 p.m., Armstrong emailed: “I’m told the application is now moot as of 9:17.”

    Ratliff replied at 9:20 p.m.: “What do you mean?”

    Michael Kelly, a spokesman for the attorney general’s office, said the email chain ended there and that Armstrong picked up the telephone and called Ratliff to fill him in.

    Brian Coy, a McAuliffe spokesman, said the governor, the only person outside the courts who could have intervened, announced his decision days earlier not to do so. The governor considered the same questions that had been turned down by other courts and that was before the Supreme Court.

    “His job as governor is not to act as a court and intervene,” Coy said. Although other governors have delayed executions under similar circumstances, Coy said, “Intervening at that point is up to the courts.” The courts, he noted, saw no reason to intervene earlier that day.

    Robert E. Lee, current director of the Capital Representation Resource Center and one of Prieto’s lawyers, saw it differently. In a statement issued shortly after the execution, he complained that it was carried out while the stay application was before the Supreme Court. “We will never know whether Mr. Prieto’s execution is legal and humane,” Lee said.

    Lee said Friday that he did not notify the attorney general’s office in addition to the governor’s office that night because it was his understanding the two offices were in communication via telephone from the prison.

    In the past, Allen and other Virginia governors generally waited until all pending court matters were settled before acting on clemency petitions. That changed with Gov. Bob McDonnell, who immediately preceded McAuliffe in office. McDonnell announced early in his administration that he would act on clemency petitions five days beforehand instead of at the last moment to spare victims’ families and the condemned from uncertainty.

    McAuliffe is following a similar policy and rejected intervening in Prieto’s case four days earlier, stating in part: “It is the governor’s responsibility to ensure that the laws of the commonwealth are properly carried out unless circumstances merit a stay or commutation of the sentence. After extensive review and deliberation, I have found no such circumstances, and have thus decided that this execution will move forward.”

    Five executions were carried out during McDonnell’s term, but unlike Prieto’s case, there were no 11th-hour stay requests that might have interfered with the timetable. A McDonnell spokesman said the former governor could not comment for this story.

    Jerry Kilgore, a former Virginia attorney general, said that as he recalls, the court process was normally allowed to run its full course before executions proceeded.

    Former Virginia Attorney General Mark L. Earley, a Richmond lawyer who now opposes the death penalty, did not respond to requests for comment.

    There have been 111 executions in Virginia since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the death penalty to resume in 1976. As is sometimes the case — but not in recent years — appeals and requests for stays were flying among courts in the hours and minutes preceding Prieto’s execution.

    Richmond lawyer William G. Broaddus, Virginia’s attorney general during five executions in 1985 and 1986, later came to oppose the death penalty. He helped represent condemned killer Angel Breard, executed in 1998 after court proceedings came down to the wire.

    “We did everything we could to avoid the last-minute stuff. I can’t stand this last-minute stuff,” Broaddus said. “It didn’t matter which side you were on. The process is so difficult to have uncertainty thrown into it, it just makes the agony that much more difficult. It’s just awful. It has to be awful for the judges,” he said.

    Breard’s was the one case that current death penalty defense lawyers thought a stay request may have been pending when he was executed. But the clerks’ offices for the U.S. Supreme Court and the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said records show no stay requests were pending when Breard’s execution took place.

    According to Times-Dispatch accounts of Breard’s execution — delayed from 9 p.m. to after 10 p.m. — the U.S. Supreme Court denied a request for a stay and other matters after 8 p.m. Breard’s lawyers filed a new petition in U.S. District Court, were refused there and then went to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which also refused the stay. The lawyers apparently did not appeal yet again to the U.S. Supreme Court.

    Then-Gov. Jim Gilmore turned down Breard’s clemency request and Breard was executed. Gilmore, also a former Virginia attorney general and Henrico County prosecutor, said he could not recall a case where an execution took place while a stay request was pending. “But if it did happen, I could see where it would, logically, maybe occur ... the execution proceeds on time unless an order is issued to stay the execution,” he said.

    “It was my recollection that there was a stay requested in (virtually) every case. That’s standard practice in death penalty cases,” he said. “Those are last-minute requests that are made to the courts, and the courts usually refuse them.”

    In Prieto’s case, the U.S. Supreme Court and other courts had turned down his appeal centering on his claim he was intellectually disabled.

    Gerald T. Zerkin, a Richmond lawyer who headed the capital representation center after Weinstein, said he was less concerned about an unresolved stay request as he was that courts would not give Prieto a chance to present evidence on his intellectual disability claim. (Courts held the claim had not been raised at the proper time, and authorities argued one jury had already rejected that argument.)

    Prieto’s lawyers, however, learned that the state had obtained one of the injection drugs from Texas a little more than a month before the execution. Virginia’s own supply would expire Sept. 30 — the day before the execution.

    Prieto that day won a temporary restraining order from a federal judge in Alexandria over concerns the drug might be defective and its use would violate the ban against cruel and unusual punishment. But the case was transferred the next day to federal court in Richmond, where, at 5:50 p.m. with the execution set for 9 p.m., a judge ruled the execution could proceed.

    Prieto appealed that ruling to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which turned him down at 9 p.m., triggering the application to the U.S. Supreme Court at 9:05 p.m.

    Prieto was executed for the capital murder of a young couple in Fairfax County in 1988. He was on death in California in 2005 for the 1990 rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl when DNA linked him to the Fairfax slayings.

    http://www.richmond.com/news/virgini...24cd20e15.html

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