RICHMOND (AP) — A man scheduled to be executed Tuesday for killing a Brunswick County convenience-store owner would be the first person put to death in the state since Gov. Timothy M. Kaine lifted a brief moratorium on executions last month.
Kevin Green, 31, is set to die at Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt for the 1998 slaying of Patricia Vaughan, who operated the store with her husband, Lawrence. Green shot the couple and fled with about $9,000.
Mr. Kaine, a Democrat, put all state executions on hold April 1 when he halted the execution of Edward Nathaniel Bell, who killed a Winchester police officer nine years ago, pending the outcome of a Kentucky case challenging the constitutionality of lethal injections. Mr. Kaine lifted the moratorium April 16 after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the method of execution. Georgia became the first to execute an inmate May 7.
Green declined to choose between lethal injection or electrocution. The state’s default method is lethal injection.
Green’s attorneys asked the Supreme Court to halt his execution while justices consider reviewing his case. They contend the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals erred when it ruled in February that he had passed the statute of limitations for claiming ineffective counsel.
The appeals court denied Green’s request for a delay Monday. Green’s attorneys also have asked Mr. Kaine to block the execution.
Green, through his attorneys, declined to be interviewed.
On Aug. 21, 1998, Green and his nephew entered Lawrence’s Grocery, where Green had gotten his paychecks cashed when he had worked at a nearby lumber yard, and Green opened fire without saying a word.
Green shot the Vaughans twice each, then stood watch while his nephew stole a bank bag with about $9,000 in it. Lawrence Vaughan said Green then shot his wife twice more in the back as she lay slumped over and then turned the gun on him, but it misfired and the men fled.
Patricia Vaughan, 53, died at the scene. Lawrence Vaughan was shot in the neck and elbow but managed to drag himself across the floor to a telephone and call for help.
Mr. Vaughan missed his wife’s funeral because he was in the hospital an hour away.
“The last time I saw my wife was when the rescue squad laid the sheet over top of her right beside me in the store,” he said in a phone interview from his home in South Hill.
Days after the shooting, police arrested Green and David Green. Kevin Green confessed, telling police they took a bus to Northern Virginia after the shootings and blew all but $170 on prostitutes, marijuana and clothes.
David Green, who was 16 at the time, pleaded guilty to murder, malicious wounding, robbery and using a firearm. He was sentenced to 23 years in prison.
Kevin Green was found guilty of robbery and capital murder in Brunswick County and sentenced to death on June 22, 2000. A year later, the state Supreme Court ordered a new trial because the trial judge had refused to strike two possibly biased jurors.
In 2001, Green was convicted at a second trial and again sentenced to death.
Green challenged his sentence on grounds that he was mentally retarded and that his attorney, through failing to appeal all of his charges, was ineffective.
In February, a three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Green’s attorneys failed to prove that he was mentally retarded. The panel found that Green’s intellectual capacity didn’t fall within the established guidelines of mental retardation, and that he had passed the statute of limitations for claiming ineffective counsel.
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