WASHINGTON, 2 LUG - Il governatore della Virginia Mark Warner ha rinviato al 22 luglio l'esecuzione di un uomo condannato per lo stupro e l'uccisione di una fioraia nel 1997.

Warner ha accolto la richiesta per il rinvio in modo da dare tempo alla Corte suprema della Virginia di esaminare una petizione contro le modalita' usate dalla giuria per decidere la condanna.

Swisher aveva confessato di aver ucciso Dawn McNees Snyder, 22 anni. Era stato condannato a morte con un verdetto successivamente ritenuto non corretto dalla Corte suprema dello stato, in quanto la giuria non fu informata della possibilita' di punire il criminale con l'ergastolo.

Ora spetta alla stessa Corte decidere la sua sorte.

VIRGINIA: Warner postpones execution scheduled for tonight

02/07/03

Gov. Mark R. Warner postponed the execution of a convicted murderer today to give the man's attorneys time to file a petition for a new sentencing hearing with the Virginia Supreme Court.

Warner stepped in less than four hours before Bobby Wayne Swisher's scheduled execution by injection at 9 p.m. EDT at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt. The U.S. Supreme Court had rejected Swisher's appeal for a stay about 2 hours earlier.

Warner postponed Swisher's execution for 3 weeks to allow the state Supreme Court to issue a stay or rule on a petition for a new hearing. Warner said if no action takes place by July 22, he would not intervene again.

The Democratic governor's postponement drew a swift and critical response from the state's Republican attorney general, Jerry W. Kilgore, who said the state had an "obligation to carry out the sentence of the jury."

"The crime committed by the defendant was a horrible, senseless crime where there is no doubt of his guilt. I am certain the victim's family would have liked to have had a reprieve for their loved one," Kilgore said in a written, 3-paragraph statement.

Lawyers for Swisher, 27, said he was entitled to a new sentencing because the jury that recommended a death sentence in 1998 for the slaying of Dawn McNees Snyder relied on a form that the Virginia Supreme Court later found defective.

His attorneys were not immediately available for comment Tuesday night.

The form did not inform jurors that the alternative to execution was life in prison without the possibility of parole. In 2001, the court ruled that juries must have that information.

Defense attorneys and capital punishment opponents say as many as 20 men have been sentenced to death by juries that used the form. They contend that more than a dozen killers executed since 1981 unsuccessfully challenged it.

Warner said the Supreme Court ruled on another case involving a similar verdict form in April, then vacated its judgment only a few weeks later, leaving the law unclear.

"In light of the recent ambiguity of the law, I believe that in this particular case such a decision is more appropriate for the Supreme Court than for a governor exercising his clemency power," Warner said in a statement.

He declined to comment further on his action, said Ellen Qualls, his press secretary.

Warner stepped in to halt an execution for the 1st time since he took office nearly 18 months ago.

It marks the first time a governor has intervened so close to the death sentence being carried out since Gov. Jim Gilmore in May 1999 granted clemency to Calvin Swann, a mentally ill man, 4 hours before he was to die. Swann's death sentence for robbing and shooting a 62-year-old man in Danville in 1992 was commuted to life in prison without parole.

Swisher's jury deliberated for about 85 minutes before finding him guilty of the Feb. 5, 1997, rape, sodomy and murder of Snyder, 22. She was an emergency medical technician and florist who had just opened her own shop, called Enchanted Florist, in Stuarts Draft. She had a daughter, who is now 9.

Swisher, a high school dropout and former construction worker, confided to friends that he had killed the florist. He later confessed to police and was linked by DNA. Snyder's decomposed body was found 16 days after the slaying in a riverside field near where she'd managed to pull herself after her throat was cut.

Snyder's mother, Sandi McNees, has said she believed Swisher got a fair trial