Condemned killer chooses electric chair

Paul Warner Powell

By: | Times-Dispatch
Published: July 01, 2009

Condemned killer Paul Warner Powell wants to be executed in Virginia’s electric chair.

He is scheduled to die July 14 for the 1999 rape and murder of a 16-year-old Yorkshire girl.

Since 1995, death row inmates in Virginia have had a choice of how they want to be executed by lethal injection or electrocution. Powell is the first inmate since 2006 to pick the electric chair.

The 29-year-old is sentenced to death for stabbing 16-year-old Stacie Reed and her 14-year-old sister, Kristie, in their Yorkshire home on Jan. 29, 1999.

Kristie’s throat was slashed, but she survived. Her sister, who suffered a stab wound to the heart, did not. Their stepfather came home from work to find Stacie dead in her bedroom and Kristie bleeding in the basement.

Despite life-threatening injuries, Kristie was able to tell police officers and paramedics that Powell was responsible. Police arrested Powell the next day at a friend’s house.

Powell was originally convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death in 2000, but the Supreme Court of Virginia tossed out the conviction, ruling that the attacks on the sisters were separate crimes and did not rise to capital murder.

After that ruling, Powell sent a letter laced with profanity to Prince William Commonwealth's Attorney Paul Ebert, giving chilling details of Stacie’s death. In it, he wrote about attempting to rape the struggling girl before stabbing her to death. The letter gave prosecutors the evidence they needed to bring a new capital murder charge against him.

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.

Powell’s lawyers have filed a clemency petition with Gov. Timothy M. Kaine and could still ask the U.S. Supreme Court to hear an appeal. But last-minute clemency is unlikely.

Since the 1995 introduction of lethal injection, 75 killers have been executed by injection and four have opted for electrocution.

In all, 339 inmates have been executed in Virginia since the first electrocution in 1908.

In 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down capital punishment, but it was reinstated in 1976. Since then, Virginia has executed 103 inmates.

Today, there are 15 inmates on death row.

Communities editor Kari Pugh can be reached at 703-878-8056.