Virginia carries out first execution in 18 months

By DENA POTTER

JARRATT, Va.

A man whose lawyers claimed was mentally disabled was executed Tuesday night for killing a Brunswick County convenience store owner in the first execution in Virginia in 18 months. 

Kevin Green, 31, was pronounced dead at 10:05 at Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt. He died by injection for the August 1998 slaying of Patricia Vaughan, who operated the store with her husband.

Green shot the couple and fled with about $9,000.

Green's execution was scheduled to begin at 9 p.m. but was delayed for about an hour when his attorneys attempted to get a federal judge to step in at the last minute. Once the judge declined, the execution proceeded.

Earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to stop the execution, and Gov. Timothy M. Kaine declined to intervene.

Green's attorneys had asked the Supreme Court to halt the execution. They claimed the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals erred when it ruled in February that Green had passed the statute of limitations for claiming ineffective counsel.

Green shot Vaughan and her husband, Lawrence, while robbing their convenience store in rural Dolphin, more than 50 miles south of Richmond. Patricia Vaughan, 53, died at the scene. Lawrence Vaughan was shot but survived.

Police say Green confessed, telling them he and his nephew took a bus to northern Virginia and blew all but $170 of the $9,000 they stole on prostitutes, marijuana and clothes.

His nephew, 16 at the time, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 23 years in prison.

Green went to trial and was found guilty of robbery and capital murder and sentenced to death in 2000. A year later, the Virginia Supreme Court ordered a new trial because of juror problems. Green was convicted again in 2001 and again sentenced to death.

The Vaughan family had waited 10 years to see the sentence carried out.

"I feel like we're the puppets and they're being the puppeteers," said Marsha Brown, one of the Vaughans' two daughters. She planned to watch Green's execution with her father, sister, husband, stepmother and two local officials.

"It's just a fine line between being hopeful and helpless. I really regret that another life has to be involved - that an execution has to happen - but I just think it needs to be carried out," she said.

Kaine, a Roman Catholic, has acknowledged an objection to the death penalty, but pledged when he was elected in 2005 to carry out the state's laws.

A federal magistrate judge decided after a 2006 hearing that Green's IQ was below the mental retardation threshold of 70 but that he could perform basic functions, such as getting a job and a driver's license.

Attorneys for Green and organizations that represent people with mental disabilities argue that the judge erred because he focused on the things Green could do instead of the real-world limitations he faced, such as language deficiencies, the inability to write and to care for himself, and difficulty with simple tasks like tying his shoes or making Kool-Aid.

They claim Virginia would become the first state to execute a mentally disabled person since the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed it in 2002 in another Virginia case.

Kaine, however, said Tuesday on a monthly call-in radio show on WTOP in Washington, D.C., that the courts have found Green is not mentally disabled.

Green, through his attorneys, declined to be interviewed.

Green requested that prison officials not release the contents of his last meal, said Larry Traylor, a spokesman for the Virginia Department of Corrections. Traylor said Green did not meet with family or a spiritual adviser Tuesday but did speak to his attorneys.

He was the 99th person executed in Virginia since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976. Virginia ranks second only to Texas, which has executed 405.