Pope Joins Outcry to Halt Murder Convict’s Execution

Virginia is facing growing international pressure, including a call from the pope, to stop the planned execution of a man who says he has DNA evidence proving his innocence.

The case of Joseph O’Dell, scheduled to die by lethal injection Wednesday, has sparked street protests in Rome; visits by Sister Helen Prejean, author of “Dead Man Walking”; and a plea for clemency from the Vatican.

Virginia has executed eight people this year, including Monday’s lethal injection death of Ronald Lee Hoke Jr., a convicted rapist and murderer.

O’Dell’s case, however, has drawn intense fire from death penalty opponents at home and abroad who are demanding Virginia halt Wednesday’s execution to consider new evidence that the 55-year-old convict says will set him free.

O’Dell, who represented himself at his 1985 trial, was convicted of raping and murdering Helen Schartner of Virginia Beach, a secretary whom he allegedly abducted at gunpoint. Now he says DNA evidence that emerged three years after the trial proves blood found on a shirt and jacket he wore did not match that of the victim.

“The main evidence at trial, the evidence that I think the jury relied on, was blood-test evidence, and that evidence has been completely undermined and contradicted by what’s come along later on,” O’Dell’s lawyer, Robert Smith, told CNN.

O’Dell said the blood got on his clothes when he broke up a fight. Armed with the DNA test, he appealed his death sentence, but court officials refused to admit the finding into evidence on the grounds that the blood sample was too degraded to be conclusive.

O’Dell’s supporters are pressing harder on Virginia Gov. George F. Allen, who says he will not consider acting until the U.S. Supreme Court decides whether it will hear O’Dell’s petition for a stay.

The Supreme Court tends to avoid hearing death penalty appeals, and Allen has granted clemency only once.

O’Dell has been visited twice by Sister Prejean, the nun whose book was made into a movie last year.

O’Dell’s bid to escape execution also won the backing of Pope John Paul II, who last week directed the Vatican’s representative in Washington to intercede in his name.

Last week in Italy, which has no death penalty, about 50 protesters demonstrated outside the U.S. Embassy in Rome, and Italian officials said Friday they had conveyed concern over O’Dell’s fate to the U.S. government.