A mildly retarded Danville man recently became the second inmate in seven months to leave Virginia's death row alive because of intervention by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Terry Williams, who has an IQ of 69, was sentenced to death in 1986 for hitting a drinking buddy with a gardening tool. But the high court ruled in April that his court-appointed attorney's performance was so bad that Williams deserved a new chance to plead for his life.
Prosecutors and Williams's appeals attorneys then negotiated to avoid a full resentencing hearing before a new jury.
Prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty, and Williams, 45, gave up any chance at parole.
Williams's plea deal comes at a time when Virginia's system of capital punishment faces increasing scrutiny. In April, Benjamin Lee Lilly became the first inmate in nearly a decade to walk off the state's death row after accepting a life sentence. The Supreme Court had found that his trial contained a serious constitutional error. 
The Williams case was highly unusual. Harris T. Stone's death was initially attributed to alcohol poisoning, and police opened an investigation only after they received an anonymous letter confessing to Stone's death and traced it to Williams.
Williams's attorney, E.L. Motley, never told the jury that Williams had a sixth-grade education or that his mother drank heavily during pregnancy. He also failed to return the phone calls of a respected accountant who volunteered to serve as a character witness.
That performance, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3, was unconstitutionally bad. It also bothered the judge in the original trial, James F. Ingram, who recommended that Williams get a new sentencing hearing in 1996.
Ingram's opinion carried great weight with residents and officials in Danville. Before the high court intervened, more than 1,000 people, including four members of the Danville City Council, petitioned Gilmore for clemency for Williams. Two of Stone's daughters also asked Gilmore to save Williams's life.