Richmonder on federal death row reacts to plan to resume executions: 'We were all really surprised'

“We were all really surprised here! We still are,” wrote inmate James H. Roane Jr. of Richmond. “We learned that they would start up executions again just like everyone else — through the news,” he added.

Roane, 53, was a member of a short-lived, frenetically homicidal crack cocaine operation in Richmond, dubbed the Newtowne gang. He and two other gang members, Cory Johnson, 50, and Richard Tipton, 49, were sentenced to death in 1993 amid the city’s deadliest decade in modern history.

The three are now the longest-serving inmates on federal death row. Execution dates were set last month for five other federal inmates, but it could be years, if ever, before Roane, Tipton and Johnson have dates set in light of a lawsuit pending in Washington.

All three also have life sentences, and the public will be protected whether or not they are executed, said Howard C. “Toby” Vick Jr., who helped prosecute them as an assistant U.S. attorney. “Had they ever seen the streets again, I don’t have any doubt that they would continue to kill,” he said.

“It was an extremely violent group, an exclamation point on the crack violence of the ’80s and early ’90s when Richmond was awash in murders,” said Vick, now a partner at McGuireWoods.

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From 1988 to 1997, Richmond’s homicide toll topped 100 victims per year, peaking in 1994 at 160, making the city one of the deadliest per capita in the country. In early 1992, Johnson, Tipton and Roane took things to a new level, committing at least 10 murders in 45 days.

The gang’s victims included suspected snitches, rival dealers and those who had disrespected a gang partner. Some were stabbed, one 85 times. Some were shot, one 16 times. And at least one was shot and stabbed.

They were indicted in April 1992, charged in the slaying of 10 people. An 11th homicide attributed to the gang was not prosecuted.

Testimony showed that the conspiracy began in Trenton, N.J., where Johnson and Tipton, of New York City, joined. It expanded to Richmond, where Roane joined in late 1991, operating in part in the Newtowne area, a tiny section of the Carver neighborhood.

The gang wanted to control the crack trade in the Jackson Ward, Gilpin Court and Carver areas. The gang obtained powdered cocaine from New York, cooked it into crack, packaged it and then distributed it through 30 to 40 street-level dealers.

Each man was convicted of conducting a continuing criminal enterprise and they became the second, third and fourth persons in the country sentenced to death under a law enacted in 1988 against murder in the furtherance of a drug kingpin conspiracy.

The jury imposed the death sentences on Feb. 16, 1993, after 22 hours of deliberations spread over four days.

Vick said, “It’s a very serious thing, to ask for the death penalty against people. But it’s something that we thought was appropriate in these circumstances, given just the violence that they brought with them.”

“They were extremely dangerous. ... The two most violent, to my memory, were Tipton and Johnson,” he said. ”Even the psychiatrist called by the defense noted they were veritable killing machines.”

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Roane has maintained he did not kill Douglas Moody, the murder for which he received a death sentence. Moody, 36, of the 1300 block of West Catherine Street, was shot and stabbed just after midnight on Jan. 13, 1992.

In response to questions from the Richmond Times-Dispatch via an electronic message service for federal inmates, Roane asserted: “I am innocent of the Moody killing! And I can prove it if I can just get into the courts again!”

About 60 inmates are on the federal government’s death row at the U.S. penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind. Roane was the only one of seven inmates who were sentenced to death in federal courts in Virginia to respond to requests for comment from The Times-Dispatch.

In a message this week, he wrote, “I am not the young man I used to be back then. Yes, I’ve made some Bad choices in my young life!”

Roane added, “I am truly sorry about that all! And I don’t say that because I am looking for anything or anyone to feel bad or sad for me! I am just a changed man who really wants to help our trouble youth out there who grew up like me!”

“I am truly hoping that those I may have hurt or harmed in any way one day forgive me! Yes I know and understand that a lot of them could still be upset or mad to this day.”

U.S. District Judge James R. Spencer tossed out Roane’s conviction in the Moody slaying in 2003. However, in 2004 a federal appeals court reversed Spencer and affirmed Roane’s death sentence. In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the appeals of all three.

In a 2010 court pleading, the Innocence Network wrote that “Roane consistently has asserted his innocence for Mr. Moody’s murder and, at trial, presented some evidence indicating the actual killer was ... a violent young drug dealer.” The organization contends that new evidence conclusively proves that the other drug dealer killed Moody because he owed the dealer money for drugs.

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Last month, the U.S. Department of Justice set execution dates for five other inmates, all of them sentenced to death years after the Newtowne gang. The department said the five had exhausted their appeals and there are currently no legal impediments preventing their executions.

Ruth Friedman, director of the Federal Capital Habeas Project, said the federal government’s use of the death penalty — like that of the states — is largely dictated by geography.

“Federal death sentences are concentrated in a small number of states and judicial circuits, primarily in the South,” Friedman said. Three states — Virginia, Texas and Missouri — are responsible for nearly half of all current federal death sentences, she said.

Texas and Virginia lead the country in state court-ordered executions since 1976 — when the U.S. Supreme Court allowed executions to resume — with 561 and 113, respectively. Missouri, fifth among states, has conducted 88 executions during the same period.

Sam Spital, director of litigation for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said, “There isn’t any transparency about why the government sets execution dates for which people when.”

But, he said, none of the five with execution dates are among the half-dozen plaintiffs — who include Roane, Johnson and Tipton — in a suit pending in federal court in Washington challenging the legality of the government’s lethal injection protocol.

Execution dates for the Newtowne gang members had been set for May 2006, but the federal judge hearing the case in Washington put their executions on hold.

When the suit was filed in 2005 the federal government, like most states, had a three-drug execution procedure. However, the scarcity of manufactured drugs for use in executions in recent years has forced some states, like Virginia, to turn to secret pharmacies which compound the drugs.

Some states now just use one drug, and last month the U.S. Department of Justice and Bureau of Prisons announced a new execution protocol that calls for using only pentobarbital.

The government said that since 2010, 14 states have used pentobarbital in more than 200 executions, and federal courts have upheld its use in executions.

Spital and other critics contend that lethal injection poses a substantial risk that an inmate could be tortured to death but cannot demonstrate or otherwise express pain because the drugs prevent them from doing so.

He said the pending Washington case prevents the government from executing the plaintiffs while the court reviews the government’s protocol, including the new one for which authorities have not disclosed the source and quality of the drug or the way it will be administered.

“By setting dates for [five] individuals not currently part of that case, the government is essentially seeking to circumvent the judicial review process,” Spital said.

Among other things, the plaintiffs allege that the government, in adopting its execution protocols, violated the federal Administrative Procedure Act, which requires notice and an opportunity for comment.

Last week Paul F. Enzinna, a lawyer for Roane, and lawyers for the other plaintiffs notified the court that they plan to file a motion to reopen discovery in the case by Aug. 26 in response to the new protocol involving pentobarbital announced by the government.

“Since that drug was not used in the Old Protocol, all the discovery taken to date in this case regarding the provenance, efficacy and safety of the drugs defendants intend to use to kill plaintiffs has been rendered moot,” the lawyers wrote.

U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan has scheduled a conference for the parties in the suit for Thursday.