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| Virginia Inmate Executed After Clemency Appeal |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 06/14/2002 |
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A convicted killer who had sought a new trial because his lawyer once represented the victim was executed Wednesday night for stabbing the teenager 143 times in 1992. Before he was given the lethal injection, Walter Mickens Jr., 47, said he forgave Gov. Mark Warner for rejecting his clemency request three hours earlier. He added: 'I pray that you can forgive me. And I am truly sorry for the pain and suffering that I have caused to all my brothers and sisters in Christ.' Mickens was convicted of killing 17-year-old Timothy Jason Hall, robbing him and attempting to sodomize him in a seedy warehouse district in Newport News in 1992. DNA tests on semen found at the scene connected Mickens to the crime, and he allegedly confessed to an investigator and fellow inmate. The American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, the former head of the American Bar Association's ethics committee and a Virginia congressman had written the governor on Mickens' behalf. They contended Mickens deserved clemency - or even a new trial - because his lawyer had been previously appointed to represent Hall and never told Mickens. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, a branch of the Organization of American States, also sent a letter to Warner via the U.S. State Department asking for a stay until it could review the facts in the case. The U.S. Supreme Court blocked Mickens' execution in April 2001 and ruled 5-4 a month later that there was no provable conflict of interest on the part of Mickens' court-appointed lawyer. The lawyer, Bryan Saunders, had appeared in court only days before Mickens' arrest to represent Hall on an assault and battery charge in an unrelated case. Hall was accused of shoving his mother during an argument and carrying a concealed knife in his car. Saunders has said that he had no conflict of interest and that he believed his duty to Hall ended when he learned his client was dead. |
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