Condemned man opts for electric chair

Paul Warner Powell has chosen to die in the electric chair if he is executed as scheduled July 14 for the 1999 slaying of a 16-year-old girl.

Condemned inmates in Virginia have been given a choice between electrocution and lethal injection since Jan. 1, 1995. Since then, 75 killers have been executed by injection and four have been electrocuted.

Larry Traylor, spokesman for the Virginia Department of Corrections, said Powell has the right to change his mind. Executions, by electric chair or injection, are carried out at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt.

Powell, an avowed racist, said he stabbed Stacie Lynn Reed, a high school freshman, in her Manassas home after they argued about her black boyfriend. After he killed Stacie, Powell raped and attempted to kill her 14-year-old sister, Kristie.

Powell's first death sentence was tossed out by the Virginia Supreme Court. He was sentenced to death a second time after he admitted in an obscene, taunting letter to Prince William County Commonwealth's Attorney Paul B. Ebert that he attempted to rape Stacie.

When he wrote it, Powell mistakenly believed he could not face the death penalty again. The letter was used against him in his second trial.

Powell's current lawyers have filed a clemency petition with Gov. Timothy M. Kaine and could ask the U.S. Supreme Court to hear an appeal.

One of the lawyers, Jonathan P. Sheldon, said yesterday that Powell told him he would choose electrocution because he had helped persuade Brandon Hedrick to do so. Hedrick, 27, executed July 20, 2006, was the last Virginia inmate to die in the electric chair.

"Paul feels he convinced Hedrick, so . . . he feels he can't back out and [die by] lethal injection," Sheldon said.

Sheldon, a critic of lethal injection, said that "most of the [death-row] inmates have a serious concern that lethal injection is administered incorrectly and that there is a high probability they will be suffocated to death and not killed in the way . . . it is intended to kill."

David Clemenston, a spokesman for the Virginia Attorney General's Office, said lethal injection is constitutional and has been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court and Virginia courts. "It is far more merciful than any death inflicted on the victims of the condemned," he said.

Sheldon and others contend that Virginia's procedures have not been open enough for courts to consider fully and that if not done properly, an inmate could be paralyzed by one of the three drugs used and yet conscious while another of the drugs kills.

Kaine, who personally opposes capital punishment, nevertheless believes lethal injection is constitutional.

However, Kaine expressed concern about the electric chair after Hedrick's execution in 2006. At the time, he said he believed the electric chair no longer should be used in Virginia. Gordon Hickey, a Kaine spokesman, said yesterday that the governor still feels the same way.

Of the 35 states that have the death penalty, seven allow for electrocutions, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Lethal injection is the default method in Virginia if an inmate refuses to choose.

Powell's clemency petition to Kaine focuses on an error made during the sentencing phase of Powell's trial in which an incorrect criminal record -- that wrongly indicated Powell previously had been convicted of capital murder -- was given to the jury.

The matter has been raised in appeals and rejected. But the petition notes that the Virginia Supreme Court and the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals did so in close votes -- 4-3 and 2-1, respectively.

Sheldon, Powell's lawyer, contends that "the substance of the problem in the clemency petition has never been addressed by any court."

The petition concludes: "The case of Paul Powell involves an individual who clearly evokes no one's sympathy. Still, confidence in the justice system requires that jurors be given accurate information prior to being asked to choose between life and death."

Hickey, Kaine's spokesman, said it is the governor's policy not to comment on pending clemency petitions.

In 1993, a juvenile court psychologist said Powell showed signs of suicidal thought and self-destructive tendencies.

Shortly after he was arrested in the capital murder, Powell indicated to a jail counselor that he wanted to die in the electric chair.

Contact Frank Green at (804) 649-6340 or .