U.S. Supreme court stays Powell’s execution

The U.S. Supreme Court has stayed the execution of Paul Warner Powell set for tomorrow night in the 1999 slaying of 16-year-old Stacie Lynn Reed.

The stay will hold at least until late September when the justices have their next regular conference to consider what cases to take up in the coming term.

The high court could decide to hear Powell’s double jeopardy claim, further delaying any execution; turn him down, automatically lifting the stay; or do nothing, indicating the court may wait until it decides a different case in which another issue raised by Powell is being considered.

Powell, 31, had had asked to die in the electric chair.

After his first death sentence was thrown out, Powell, 31, got himself onto Virginia’s death row a second time for the capital murder of Reed.

Powell’s first death sentence was overturned by the Virginia Supreme Court in 2001, saying it had to be proved that Powell had raped, robbed, or attempted to rape or rob Stacie in addition to killing her.

Believing there was no risk of execution in a retrial on a lesser charge of first-degree murder, Powell wrote a mocking letter to the prosecutor, revealing he had attempted to rape Stacie before killing her in her Manassas-area home.

That letter was the basis of the state’s second prosecution, which Powell’s lawyers contend is being tried twice for the same crime.