If Paul Warner Powell wants to avoid lethal injection, his next step is the U.S. Supreme Court.
The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday upheld the capital murder conviction of the Manassas man who landed on death row after writing a taunting letter to prosecutors detailing how he killed a teenage girl.
Powell, now 29, stabbed 16-year-old Stacey Reed and her 14-year-old sister Katie, in their Yorkshire home in January 1999. Kristie survived. Her sister did not.
Powell was originally convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death in 2000, but the Supreme Court of Virginia tossed out the conviction.
Justices ruled that the attacks on Stacey and Katie were separate crimes, and did not rise to capital murder.
Thinking he couldn’t be tried twice for the same crime, Powell wrote a profanity-laced letter to Prince William Commonwealth’s Attorney Paul Ebert, giving chilling details of Stacey’s death.
“Since ... the Va. Supreme Court said that I can’t be charged with capital murder again, I figured I would tell you the rest of what happened on Jan. 29, 1999, to show you how stupid all y’all are,” Powell wrote.
He wrote about attempting to rape Stacey before brutally stabbing and beating her to death. Prosecutors — armed with evidence of a second felony in the commission of the killing — had fodder to charge him with capital murder.
He was convicted in 2003, and the appeals began soon after. Through the years, state appeals courts and the Virginia Supreme Court have upheld his conviction.
In the federal appeal just decided, Powell’s attorneys argued his conviction should be thrown out on the grounds his original legal counsel was ineffective. They also argued that trying him a second time in Stacey’s death amounted to double jeopardy.
The appeals court disagreed. Powell’s next and final step in the appeals process is the Supreme Court.
Powell had been set to be executed on July 16, 2007, but was granted an emergency stay pending the federal appeals process.
Communities editor Kari Pugh can be reached at 703-878-8056.
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