Supreme Court upholds stay of execution

Thursday, March 9th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

McALESTER, Okla. (AP) -- Only six hours before he was to die, with his last meal ordered and his funeral arranged, Loyd LaFevers received another 90 days of life by the U.S. Supreme Court.

LaFevers was to be executed early this morning for killing an 84-year-old woman in 1985. But late Wednesday afternoon, the Supreme Court rejected Attorney General Drew Edmondson's petition to vacate a stay that had been ordered a day earlier by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver.

"We're disappointed, but have a great deal of faith that Mr. LaFevers will be executed before the year is over," Edmondson said.

The federal appeals court ordered U.S. District Judge Tim Leonard to grant the stay after new DNA findings contradicted evidence used by prosecutors in LaFevers' trial. Defense attorney Pat Ehlers had received the results only last week.

The Supreme Court's decision followed a day of anxious waiting by family members of LaFevers, 34, and Addie Hawley, the woman he was convicted of kidnapping, beating and setting on fire.

Hawley's nephew, Colorado state Sen. Ken Chlouber, traveled to Oklahoma to witness the execution. He said Edmondson had "dropped the law" by failing to kill LaFevers.

"To have this sort of legal gymnastics shows that this attorney general's office wasn't properly prepared," Chlouber said.

The stay had baffled the state Pardon and Parole Board, which planned a clemency hearing Wednesday for LaFevers. After recessing three times to await the Supreme Court's decision, the board finally decided to adjourn the clemency hearing until March 21.

LaFevers' family, including his mother and two teen-age children, left the Oklahoma State Penitentiary unsure. "I just want them to deal in the DNA much further," said LaFevers' sister, Kim LaFevers.

After making funeral arrangements and visiting her brother on Sunday, Kim LaFevers said she cried for the first time since the conviction when hearing about the stay.

"I was just so happy," she said. Her brother had always admitted being involved in the crime but denied being the killer. Recent DNA tests showed that blood on a pair of pants used by the state in LaFevers' trial was that of co-defendant Randall Eugene Cannon.

Ehlers argued the DNA findings warranted further testing, including tests on hair found at the crime scene. He also had not received the complete case file since being handed LaFevers' case this year, and an earlier defense attorney missed a deadline to file an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court, he said.

In ordering the stay, senior Circuit Judge John Porfilio wrote that it would be unjust "in accordance with Constitutional principles" to execute LaFevers until his lawyers have more time.

"We are motivated solely by the demonstration of a reasonable probability that adequate grounds exist and that time should be granted for the development of evidence necessary for the preparation of a proper application," Porfilio wrote.

LaFevers was 19 with a 10th-grade education when the crime occurred. According to court records, LaFevers and Cannon kidnapped Hawley from her Oklahoma City home on June 24, 1985, and put her in the trunk of her car She was driven to a remote area where she was raped, beaten, set afire and abandoned.

Hawley was found alive but died a short time later. LaFevers and Cannon were tried together and sentenced to death in 1985. The state appeals court ordered new trials in 1993, saying the state should have tried them separately.

The murder convictions stood in separate trials and they each received a death sentence. Cannon remains on death row.

Chlouber said he'll be back to try again and see justice for his aunt's convicted. "Every day this guy is living has been an injustice," he said. If the execution "is in 60, 90 or 100 days, I'll be there."