Also pending late Monday was a request for a stay before the U.S.
Supreme Court challenging a state law that requires that executions be
set within 60 days of final appeals.
During trial, Prosecutor Albert Alberi told jurors that Townes had
robbed the Majik Mart and then murdered Goebel to prevent her from
identifying him.
Townes, who represented himself during his trial, had little to say on
his behalf during his sentencing hearing. He offered no mitigating
evidence, questioned no witnesses and did not argue to the jury. He
made no objection when the jury asked their question about his
likelihood of receiving parole.
In 1994, the U.S. Supreme Court, ruling in the case of Simmons vs.
South Carolina, said a defendant must be allowed to tell the jury that
he is ineligible for parole if given a life term in cases where
prosecutors are arguing for death based on future dangerousness.
Wadyka interprets that law to apply in the Townes case, though the
legal waters are murky. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has
ruled that the Simmons case does not apply in the Townes case.
During the sentencing hearing, jurors heard about Townes' past record
and propensity for violence. He had 29 felony convictions, including
22 for passing bad checks. Jurors also heard testimony from Norfolk
taxi driver Arthur Beasley about how Townes and another man held him
prisoner in his cab for six hours in 1976 before shooting him in the
back four times.
Townes would not have been eligible for parole due to Virginia law
that does not allow parole for people convicted of three separate
crimes of violence. He could have told this to the jury, but did not.
Relatives of murder victim Goebel said Monday they had mixed feelings
about tonight's scheduled execution.
Goebel's mother, Virginia B. Aygarn, recalled having pity for Townes'
family during the trial.
``I felt so sorry for his grandmother . . . sitting there just reading
the Bible,'' she said during an interview at her home in Pungo. ``She
looked so hurt.''
But on the other hand, ``There's a terrible hardness in me that says
fry him,'' the 64-year-old woman said softly in the living room of the
three-bedroom farmhouse where her daughter grew up. ``There's a
terrible hardness in me.''
``He had no right to kill her,'' Aygarn said, showing pictures of
Goebel's two daughters, who were small children when their mother was
murdered. ``I feel like if he had the opportunity to get out in 30
years, I think he would do it again.''
Aygarn said she ``always used to think that the death penalty was
wrong. .
``I thought to myself, how dare he,'' she said emotionally. ``What
right had he to do such a thing? She was just a poor woman up there
trying to earn a living. And he just got her down on the floor and
shot her in the head.''
Now, ``what's done is done,'' Aygarn said quietly.
``I don't think it would make any difference whether they fry him or
not,'' said 34-year-old Lucy Aygarn, the victim's sister. ``He had
already been proved a menace to society. That man should have never
been out on parole in the first place.''
``There was nothing that could have stopped him except locking him up
forever,'' Lucy Aygarn said as tears rolled down her face. ``Ginny was
just too good of a person.''
The Townes case is not the only death-row case that has recently
addressed the issue of jurors' knowledge of a defendant's parole
eligibility. The other case involves Joseph O'Dell, convicted of
capital murder in the death of Helen C. Schartner in Virginia Beach.
In September 1994, U.S. District Court Judge James R. Spencer
overturned O'Dell's death sentence, ruling that his rights were
violated because he was not allowed to rebut prosecutors' argument
about his future dangerousness with evidence that he was ineligible
for parole.
``There is a reasonable probability that this constitutional error had
a `substantial and injurious effect or influence' in the jury's
decision to impose the death penalty,'' the judge wrote.
The state appealed, and that case is before the federal appeals court
in Richmond. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Richard Townes Jr., 45, is scheduled to die tonight for his
conviction in the 1985 shooting death of Virginia Goebel, 32.
Color Staff photo by D. Kevin Elliott
Virginia B. Aygarn, left, with daughter Lucy, said of the killer's
family, "I felt so sorry for his grandmother...sitting there just
reading the Bible." but she also said, "There's a terrible hardness
in me that says fry him."
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