31-year-old Paul Warner Powell from Manassas in Virginia was most likely feeling a little apprehensive on the evening of March 17th, 2010. And with very good reason. The very next day, he was due to be placed in the electric chair in the Greensville Correctional Center, and executed by the state.
However, he may not have felt quite as nervous as you might think, because Powell had a bit of experience with this kind of situation. I don’t mean he had experience with the whole ‘getting executed by electric chair’ thing. Guests invited to take the hot seat don’t usually get a chance to leave much feedback or make notes for next time.
But he did have some experience with hanging around and waiting to be potentially executed the very next day. In the past, he’d been granted unexpected last-minute reprieves, and it wasn’t out of the question that he might just get another. In fact, Paul Warner Powell had been playing musical electric chairs ever since he was first sentenced to death ten years earlier.
But every time he was thrown a potential lifeline, Powell had an unusual habit of writing himself into a new corner. And he would probably still be alive today if he’d taken the time to brush up on his law before composing a particularly nasty and ill-conceived letter which would effectively make him the author of his own death warrant. It’s almost as if Paul Warner Powell killed himself with cockiness.
But not everyone can agree on whether it was Powell or the US courts who really needed to take a much closer study of a particularly confusing law.
The Incriminating Ink of Paul Warner Powell
No matter how many times it is stressed that writing down your crimes is an exceptionally bad idea, there’s always some idiot criminal who insists on breaking the rules. I used to be kind of guilty of this myself back at school. Not that I ever dared break the law when I was a kid.
But whereas I’m sure every school kid in the classroom has at some point leaned over to the kid sitting next to them and whispered jokes or insults relating to the grumpy teacher, I think I always craved a bigger audience for my best material. And so I used to discreetly write down my scathing critique of a teacher’s performance on a piece of paper and get everyone to pass it around the class whenever the teacher’s back was turned. I felt that this helped lighten the mood for everyone during a spectacularly grim lesson.
Of course, there’s always some muppet who either giggles too loudly or bungles up the stealth operation of passing the note onto the next kid. On this particular occasion, I’d written a dense, multi-layered piece which explored several theories on why exactly our geography teacher Mr Turnbull stank of dead cats. I say dense and multi-layered.
It might have been quite raw and primitive. But Mr Turnbull had it coming after he’d just thrown a blackboard duster at me for “sneezing provocatively” in class. Of course, Mr Turnbull got hold of the offending piece of paper and his shrewd detective skills instantly led him to the conclusion that I was the culprit.
He always knew it was me. This was largely because I always inexplicably put my name at the bottom of these pieces of paper like a complete imbecile. It took me way too long to learn the lesson that secret offensive notes about the teacher didn’t necessarily require a proud author’s credit.
Stinky-Cat-Corpse Turnbull wasn’t very impressed and gave me 400 lines to write in detention. I gave him 750 lines and didn’t charge him for the extra. However, the story of Paul Warner Powell’s writing credits is far from a flippant tale.
It involved devastating consequences for the family of a victim who had been kind enough to offer Powell a hand of friendship which didn’t reach far enough for this utterly brutal man.
The Victims: Stacie and Kristie Reed
In 1999, Stacie Lynn Reed was just sixteen years of age and harbouring an unusual ambition. Stacie lived in the small town of Yorkshire in Manassas, Prince William County, Virginia, with her mother Lorraine, her stepfather Robert Culver, and her 14-year-old sister Kristie. Stacie was a model student who hit good grades, and she was working hard to achieve her dream of joining the military. She had recently enlisted in the Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps, and that unusual ambition of hers was to become the first ever female Navy SEAL officer.
In contrast, Paul Warner Powell — who lived just around the corner from Stacie — didn’t appear to have such a bright future ahead of him. The 20-year-old man was an angry white supremacist who had endured a life of rejection and had very few friends. He’d already built up a small criminal record including convictions for larceny and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
Stacie had recently struck up a friendship with Powell, although the rest of the family knew very little about him. Stacie’s mother and stepfather had never met him, and younger sister Kristie had only just got to know the man’s name. Powell had become infatuated with Stacie and clearly hoped for something much more than friendship, despite the fact that Stacie’s young age would have made this legally problematic.
Stacie had always made it clear that she wasn’t remotely interested anyway. She was happily dating a fellow member of the Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps by the name of Sean Wilkerson who had recently moved out of town but planned to meet up again with Stacie soon to attend a local military ball.
Powell found it difficult to handle another rejection. But there was another factor which sent the white supremacist’s feelings boiling over into uncontrollable outrage. Sean Wilkerson was an African American. Unable to deal with the idea that his lecherous advances were being spurned in favour of a young man of colour, Powell decided to pay Stacie a surprise visit on the afternoon of January 29th, 1999.
In his own later words, the purpose of his visit was to “teach Stacie a lesson.” He came equipped with a pistol, a bunch of knives, and a box cutter.
The Attack
Stacie was home alone as Powell waited outside the house for over an hour. He eventually let himself in whilst Stacie was taking a telephone call with boyfriend Sean. After a startled Stacie hung up, Powell became agitated and demanded that Stacie break up the relationship with Sean.
When Stacie told him where to go, the argument became increasingly heated and Powell eventually resorted to making hostile sexual advances on Stacie, whilst delivering a cold warning that they could “Do this the easy way or the hard way.” During Powell’s protracted attempted rape, his victim fought him off. But in the face of stronger resistance than he may have been expecting, Powell pulled out a butterfly knife and stabbed Stacie repeatedly in the chest, arms, and back.
Bleeding heavily, Stacie stumbled into her younger sister’s bedroom, at which point Powell followed her and put his foot on her throat until Stacie stopped breathing.
It was later confirmed that Stacie died from a stab wound to the chest which had pierced her heart. There were also numerous bruises and cuts all over her body, including her head, neck, and wrists, some of which were described as defensive wounds. Fully aware that he had just murdered Stacie, Powell chose not to flee the ghastly crime scene. Instead, he made himself comfortable, smoked a few cigarettes, drank some iced tea, and waited for Stacie’s 14-year-old sister Kristie to come home from school.
When Kristie eventually walked through the door, she was surprised by the sight of Powell and concerned about the whereabouts of her sister. Powell casually told her that Stacie was just upstairs in her bedroom, but Kristie was puzzled when she went up to the room and saw no sign of Stacie. Kristie then went to have a look in her own bedroom, and this was where she found the dead body of her older sister on the floor.
Powell had followed Kristie up the stairs, and as she began to cry in terror, Powell pulled out the same butterfly knife and ordered her down to the basement where he instructed her to take off her clothes, and then raped her at knifepoint. Kristie made no attempt to resist as she was petrified that Powell would kill her.
The barbaric act was interrupted when there was a knock on the door. Kristie had arranged for her school friend Mark Lewis to call round, and he had arrived on time. Powell tied up Kristie’s arms behind her back with her own shoelaces, and made his way upstairs for a potential confrontation, armed with his pistol.
Mark Lewis knocked just a few more times and then gave up and walked back home, unaware that he had unwittingly escaped death at the hands of Powell in all likelihood. During this brief distraction, Kristie had tried to make her own attempt at an escape by loosening her bonds and shuffling across the basement floor, but this was all she could manage before Powell returned to the scene. He removed Kristie’s spectacles, strangled her with the shoelaces until she was unconscious, and then stabbed her multiple times in the neck and abdomen before slashing her wrists and leaving her to die in the basement.
Powell still didn’t seem in any great hurry to get out of the house. He went back upstairs, washed his hands, and had some more iced tea before he eventually decided to make his exit. It later transpired that the first part of his plan had involved raping and killing both Stacie and Kristie Reed.
The next part of his plan had involved waiting until their mother and stepfather arrived home so that he could murder them for reasons that aren’t entirely clear. He may have felt that his name was less likely to get mentioned in a list of suspects if the parents were out of the picture, but neither parent had ever met him. For whatever reason, Powell changed his mind about the second phase, and eventually left the house before Lorraine Reed and Robert Culver got home from work.
He hooked up with one of his few friends and they took a drive to Washington where they bought some drugs, before heading over to his mate’s girlfriend’s house and ordering some pizza. When they heard the knock on the door, they may have assumed that the pizza delivery guy had arrived earlier than expected. In fact, it was the police.
Against all the odds, Kristie Reed had survived her ordeal and had identified Paul Warner Powell as her attacker.
The Aftermath and Investigation
Stepfather Robert Culver is still haunted by regret over a decision he took on that working day. He was feeling a little ill, and his boss told him to go home early and get some rest. But Robert politely refused, as he was worried that the girls might think that he had only come home early to check up on them. Whilst it’s only natural to imagine how a terrible incident may have turned out differently if you’d taken an alternative decision, I think it’s important to bear in mind here that even if Robert Culver had come home early, he would have been completely unprepared for a situation which involved a wild man entering his home with a bunch of knives and a pistol.
When Robert did arrive home at 4:15 pm, he called out for the girls but heard no answer. After discovering Stacie’s body on the floor in Kristie’s bedroom, he immediately ran to the telephone and dialled 911. It was during this initial conversation with the dispatcher that he first began to hear cries coming from the basement, and dashed downstairs to find Kristie naked, bound, and bleeding, but alive.
Kristie’s throat had been slashed multiple times, and one of the wounds to her stomach had missed her carotid artery by less than half a centimetre. Her life hung in the balance as she was evacuated by helicopter to hospital where she underwent five hours of surgery including sixty stitches to her throat. Now in her mid-thirties, Kristie still bears visible neck scars today and suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder.
When the police first arrived on the scene on that night, Kristie was understandably finding it very difficult to speak at all. Yet she still somehow managed to quietly breathe just two words to the police. When one of the officers asked Kristie who had done this to her, Kristie summoned up the strength to reply: “Paul Powell.”
The evidence was already piling up as Powell was hauled in for questioning by the police. His blue sports bag had been located, containing the semiautomatic pistol and the butterfly knife, the sheaf of which was stained with blood, later confirmed to match the DNA profile of Stacie Reed. The police had also found a drawstring from Powell’s sweatshirt underneath Stacie’s body.
One of the police detectives tasked with questioning Powell was Richard Leonard who had got to know Powell a little from his earlier offences. Richard Leonard found that Powell didn’t seem to have a problem with admitting responsibility for the death of Stacie, but seemed more uncomfortable in confessing that he had raped her younger sister.
Powell initially told the police that Stacie Reed was dead because “she was stupid.” He claimed to have become involved in a heated argument with Stacie because he didn’t approve of interracial dating. When Stacie became violent and started scratching his face, Powell claimed that he tried to defend himself and she accidentally “got stuck on his knife.”
It was only during his second interview that Powell reluctantly admitted to raping and attempting to murder Kristie Reed. Although he still seemed unwilling to discuss the details of the rape, he told police that he felt he had no choice but to murder Kristie as she could testify against him in court. He may have admitted to the rape of Kristie Reed, but an important point to note here is that he didn’t admit to the attempted rape of Stacie Reed before her murder, and in fact he was never initially charged with this.
Instead, Paul Warner Powell was charged with the capital murder of Stacie Reed, and the attempted murder, rape, and abduction of Kristie Reed. He was held in prison without bail, during which period he suddenly overcame his reticence to discuss what he did to Kristie, and repeatedly boasted to his inmates that he had raped a 14-year-old virgin.
Powell’s Incriminating Letters
It was during Powell’s initial stay in prison that he first displayed a surprising propensity for writing revealing letters, although he was still some way off from penning the letter that would seal his fate. Considering Powell’s apparent infatuation with Stacie, it’s perhaps surprising to learn that one of the recipients of his many letters was his girlfriend. The other recipients included the Prince William County Commonwealth Attorney Paul Ebert who would be the prosecutor in this case, and Stacie and Kristie’s mother Lorraine Reed.
If anyone was hoping that Powell might take this opportunity to express the slightest hint of remorse for his vile actions, they would be more than just disappointed. Well, maybe one of the letters to his girlfriend came reasonably close. After Powell took the time to express his annoyance in very crude terms that Stacie didn’t have a problem with dating people of colour, he went on to assure his girlfriend that he would never treat her in the same way as Stacie, and that Kristie’s rape wasn’t planned beforehand.
He also outlined more details of what he had in mind when he visited the Reed’s house.
“Almost everything that happened in that house was planned. What was supposed to happen was, Stacie was supposed to die, and did, Kristie was supposed to die, and then I was going to wait for their mom and stepdad to get home. I was going to kill them and then I was going to take their mom’s truck and then I was gonna go to North Carolina and knock this dude off that stole all of my clothes and everything else I owned. I had been thinking about doing it for a long time but I could never bring myself to do it.
I feel bad for doing it. Stacie was a good kid.”
If those last few sentences display a flicker of remorse, it was somewhat cancelled out by the venomous threat in his brisk follow-up letter which asked his girlfriend for a friendly helping hand:
“Hey babe, what’s happening? Not too much here. I’m writing you to see if you could get one of your guy friends to do me a favour. You know that Kristie is telling the cops things and that she is going to testify against me in court. I was wondering if you could get somebody to go to a pay phone and call Kristie and tell her she better tell the cops that she lied to them and tell her she better not testify against me or she’s gonna die.”
Powell’s letter to attorney Paul Ebert isn’t quite as easy to convey, as it’s essentially little more than hateful, racist, bile which uses appalling language to illustrate Powell’s views on African Americans, Paul Ebert, and Stacie Reed. The opening line is one of the least offensive in the whole letter: “Fat Ebert, what’s up, you fat head fucker?” The closing sign-off is also dripping in similarly warm sentiment: “I will see you in Hell, bitch! Your buddy, Paul Powell.
P.S – watch your back!” In-between those opening and closing lines, Powell asks Paul Ebert — in the foulest way imaginable — to either bring the court date closer so that he can get this over with, or to let him out so that he can kill everyone in the country who isn’t white. Believe it or not, that’s not even the nastiest letter that Powell wrote during this period. He saved that for the girls’ mother Lorraine Reed.
Powell posted Lorraine a picture of a naked woman that he had cut out from the pages of Playboy magazine. The model in the photograph bore a remarkable resemblance to Stacie Reed. Powell’s accompanying letter appeared uncharacteristically polite on the surface, but the clear intent was sickening:
“Lorraine, I was wondering if you might be able to help me. I found this picture in a magazine and it kinda looks like someone I know or used to know, but I can’t think of the person’s name. I think you know the person too, so I was wondering if you could tell me the name of the person this picture resembles so I can quit racking my brain? If you don’t know the person I’m talking about, ask Kristie because I know she knows who I’m thinking of.”
The First Trial and a Bizarre Romance
Kristie Reed bravely testified against Powell on the witness stand without ever looking him in the eye during his first trial in Virginia in February 2000. Although Powell pleaded not guilty, it didn’t take long for the jury to consider the weight of evidence against him and reach a verdict. On the 5th May 2000, the jury found Paul Warner Powell to be guilty of the capital murder of Stacie Reed, and the rape and attempted murder of Kristie Reed.
The jury recommended the death penalty. The judge agreed with the jury’s findings, noting that Powell’s conduct was “outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible or inhuman, in that it involved depravity of mind and aggravated battery to the victim beyond the minimum necessary to accomplish the act of murder.” Powell was sentenced to death, and taken to Sussex I State Prison to spend the remainder of his days on Death Row.
There was one quite bizarre twist to the trial involving the forewoman on the jury, Jennifer Day. After learning that the judge intended to act on the jury’s recommendations and sentence Powell to death, Jennifer suddenly became tortured by guilt over her part in Powell’s planned execution. Pausing to reflect on this for a while, it’s perhaps not as strange as it may sound.
It’s one thing to be involved in the recommendation of sentencing a criminal to prison, but it’s likely to play heavier on the mind if you’re an ordinary person who has been randomly chosen to serve a jury which ends up making a life or death decision on a human being. And the burden of responsibility must feel even heavier when you’re the forewoman who has to vocally confirm the jury’s recommendation to the court that a human being should die.
Jennifer’s subsequent actions were far from ordinary, though. Very shortly after delivering the verdict, Jennifer rushed over to the jail to meet Powell and offer him $30. She would later develop a relationship with Powell, visiting him in prison to give him more money, and exchanging regular telephone calls and letters with him in which the pair began to refer to each other as soul mates.
Powell’s letters to Jennifer were of a considerably gentler nature than his previous enraged scribblings and taunts, although he still showed a flare of defiance when he informed Jennifer that he was going to fight against the death penalty. “They’re going to have to work for my death.” Even if Powell’s convictions had been quashed and he had been set free, I can’t help feeling this would have been a difficult relationship to pursue in the long term.
I mean, the circumstances of their meeting were bound to come up in future romantic dinner conversations and nostalgic reflections, weren’t they? “Here, Jennifer! Do you remember that time you sentenced me to death?
What a palaver!” For now though, Jennifer clearly regretted the role she played in the death sentence, and would later return to the courts, but this time in Powell’s defence.
The Appeal and the Double Jeopardy Twist
Just over one year later in June 2001, the capital murder verdict was thrown out on appeal in the Virginia Supreme Court. And the reasoning sounded utterly bonkers to me. Powell was still found to be very much guilty of rape and attempted murder, and was still destined to spend the rest of his life in prison after receiving three life sentences.
But the issue was with the original guilty verdict on the capital murder of Stacie Reed. The capital punishment laws in Virginia were a bit more complicated than most US states where the death penalty can be legally served on someone found guilty of first-degree murder. In Virginia, a death sentence is only applicable if a person is found guilty of capital murder which must involve one or more ‘aggravating factors’.
These factors can include the murder of a child or the murder of a police officer. But more significantly, they can also include the attempted robbery or rape of the victim prior to the murder.
It was felt by the Virginia Supreme Court that the original court had treated the murder of Stacie and the rape and attempted murder of Kristie as the same single crime — and so, therefore the rape and attempted murder of Kristie could be considered an aggravating factor to Stacie’s murder. However, it was now ruled that the two incidents were entirely separate, as a little bit of time had elapsed between the two events. In order for Powell to be convicted of capital murder, it must first have been proven that Powell had attempted to rape or rob Stacie before the murder.
Powell had never admitted to the attempted rape of Stacie, and there was insufficient evidence to prove otherwise. So it appears that if it could have been proven that Powell had attempted to pick his victim’s pockets before the murder, he would still have faced a death sentence. But in the absence of any such aggravating factors, the original verdict was thrown out, and Powell had been gifted a lifeline, albeit a lifeline to spend the rest of his days in prison.
Later that very same year, Powell decided to celebrate the victorious result of the appeal by writing another wacky letter to prosecutor Paul Ebert.
The Letter That Sealed His Fate
At this point, Powell was under the belief that he was completely safe from the electric chair, thanks to the ‘Double Jeopardy’ clause. So he was now at liberty to confess to anything he damn well liked without consequence. And some might suggest that you can’t really blame him, or even that he was completely right to hold this belief.
I mean, the Double Jeopardy clause is such a curious concept. We thankfully exiled it for good in England and Wales about twenty years ago. The basic principle of the old creaky procedural defence is that a person should never be tried twice for the same crime — or put in legal jeopardy — if they have already been acquitted of the charges.
This is primarily to avoid situations in which perfectly innocent parties find themselves in constant persecution from people wealthy enough to keep on dragging them back to court to face the same charges over and over again.
The exact rules have been sensibly updated in some countries over the years. For example, we largely got rid of Double Jeopardy in England and Wales in 2003 following the botched investigation into the racially motivated murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence in 1989. Some of the prime suspects were originally acquitted of the murder, but it was later concluded that the investigation had been conducted in an incompetent manner by an institutionally racist police force.
Two of the original suspects were eventually found guilty of the murder in 2012, but this only became possible following the Criminal Justice Act 2003 which included the introduction of measures designed to specifically tackle issues relevant to this case. The new act stated that a suspect of a grave offence can face a retrial if fresh and viable evidence has been brought to light. That sounds pretty reasonable to me.
It’s not out of the question that, for example, continual advances in forensic science could reveal new and utterly compelling evidence that would have been impossible to uncover during the original trial.
However, other countries such as the US, Canada, and Mexico, still take a different stance with their view that protection from Double Jeopardy is a constitutional right, and that a ‘Not Guilty’ verdict from a jury is set in stone. In the US, the Fifth Amendment clearly states: “Nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb.” And that’s all very well, but there’s a bit of scope for abuse here.
Anyone wrongly found to be innocent of a charge is now utterly immune from facing justice, even if indisputable evidence is dug up years later. He or she could make a televised confession to Oprah Winfrey, or write a bestselling book containing all the juicy details of how they got away with it, and they would still be completely untouchable. At the very least, they could write a taunting letter to the prosecutor who failed to secure the right conviction, generously advising where exactly they went wrong with the case.
And this brings us right back to Paul Warner Powell.
Again, we have no wish to reproduce the letter in full, as it’s largely an obscene rant filled with hateful language. Essentially, Powell appears to take glee in describing in vivid detail how he did indeed attempt to rape Stacie Reed before her murder, and he thanks Paul Ebert for saving him from the capital murder sentence. Here are some heavily edited segments of particular note:
“Mr. Ebert, since I have already been indicted on first-degree murder, and the Virginia Supreme Court said that I can’t be charged with capital murder again, I figured I would tell you the rest of what happened on January 29th, 1999, to show you how stupid you are. Y’all should have known that there is more to the story than what I told. You had it in writing that I planned to kill the whole family.
Since I planned to kill the whole family, why would I have fought with Stacie before killing her? I could’ve stabbed her up at any time because she was unsuspecting. I had other plans for her before she died.”
After going into horrific detail on the rape and murder, Powell continued:
“You saved my life by fucking up. Now y’all know everything that happened in that house. I guess I forgot to mention these events when I was being questioned. And y’all are supposed to be so goddamn smart.”
He then goes on to reference his upcoming sentencing date which would see him receive those three life sentences.
“Tell the family to be ready to testify and relive it all again because if I have to suffer for the next 50 or 60 years or however long, then they can suffer the torment of reliving what happened for a couple of days. Die a slow, painful, miserable death. Do you just hate yourself for being so stupid and for fucking up and saving me? Sincerely, Paul Powell.”
The Second Trial and Return to Death Row
Paul Ebert wasn’t in the least bit offended by the vile letter. In fact, he was pretty chuffed to receive it, as Powell had surely just provided him with the fresh evidence required to force a retrial. Taking the Double Jeopardy clause into account, some may find it odd that a retrial was granted. Not every judge agreed with the decision, and we’ll come back to the reasoning in a moment.
But in the meantime, Powell was somewhat taken aback to find himself on trial again in 2003 for the capital murder of Stacie Reed, with his own letter to Paul Ebert serving as the main slice of new compelling evidence.
His demeanour and attitude had noticeably changed since his earlier court appearances in which he displayed a lofty arrogance and sadistic nature. On this occasion, Powell was quiet, subdued, and he occasionally broke down in tears. Maybe he’d finally begun to feel some remorse for his actions.
Or maybe it was beginning to sink in that he really shouldn’t have written such a cocky letter. An unusual choice of witness attended court to testify on Powell’s behalf. It was none other than Jennifer Day, the forewoman of the original jury who had recommended that Powell be served with the death penalty.
Jennifer declared to the court that she loved Powell and that she had made the wrong decision on that day. She now believed that Powell was sorry and didn’t deserve to die. But this did nothing to sway the verdict of the next-generation jury.
After just 90 minutes of deliberation, the jury found Paul Warner Powell to be guilty of capital murder, and the judge once again sentenced Powell to death. Powell’s own boastful letter had dragged him right back to the electric chair.
Years of Delays and Legal Battles
It seems to take a long time for Death Row to get round to executing their prisoners. Powell’s original execution date was set for July 2007, but it was stayed until further instruction from the court as they considered the constitutional claims of the defence. It was re-scheduled for 14th July 2009, but just one day before Powell was due to take the hot seat, the execution was once again stayed as the US Supreme Court still hadn’t quite made up its mind about whether Powell was unconstitutionally convicted twice for the very same offence in violation of the Double Jeopardy clause. The Reed family were understandably feeling distressed about the continued delays in seeing any kind of closure to an ongoing ordeal that had now been stretched out for over a decade.
On the day that Powell’s execution was again delayed in 2009, Kristie Reed told the press: “I was totally against the death penalty before this happened, and I didn’t know why people would want to do it. But those people haven’t been through what we’ve been through. Now I’m totally for it. He definitely deserves to die. He needs to die for what he did to Stacie. I need to know that he’s gone, that we don’t have to deal with this anymore.”
But was it entirely lawful that Powell had been sentenced to death for a second time? Powell’s lawyer didn’t seem to think so. He argued that the retrial failed to even address the matter of Double Jeopardy.
He noted: “There is no legal logic in there that got them around it. Basically, the bottom line is, they said this case is different.” It’s interesting to note that the Supreme Court of Virginia had made the following declaration after Powell’s original death sentence was thrown out in 2001.
“Having already determined that Powell’s conviction for capital murder will be reversed, we now further determine that there is no basis upon which Powell can be retried for capital murder on remand.” Even one of the three federal judges in the US Fourth Circuit of Appeals — who would be ultimately responsible for considering whether Powell had a right to appeal his fresh death sentence on constitutional grounds – felt strongly that the second conviction constituted Double Jeopardy and insisted that the case be thrown out in fear of it setting a dangerous new precedent.
But here’s the thing; The Double Jeopardy clause only comes into force when a suspect has been found not guilty by a jury. In this case, that didn’t happen. Paul Warner Powell’s original conviction for capital murder was thrown out — or overturned — by the Virginia Supreme Court.
In a sense, that’s a bit like pretending that the original conviction never happened. It’s not the same as a definitive acquittal of the crime. At no point had Powell been declared not guilty of capital murder by a jury.
So when Powell began penning his spiteful letter to Paul Ebert, he was unaware that he could technically be tried for the same capital murder of which he had never been acquitted. Despite the sole dissenting voice of the federal judge Justice Roger L. Gregory at the US Fourth Circuit of Appeals, Powell’s appeal was rejected without comment in a 2-1 ruling.
And this brings us right back to March 17th 2010 on which the 31-year-old Powell was looking ahead to another rescheduled execution the following day.
Final Hours and Execution
This time there would be no last-minute reprieve, and new Virginia governor Bob McDonnell had put paid to any remaining hopes of the execution getting rained off again by declining Powell’s clemency petition. Powell had spent around 90 minutes of his last full day on a conference call to the Reed family, during which he finally appeared to express some remorse, although mother Lorraine noted that he conveyed remorse “in his own way.” Lorraine told the press that she had forgiven Powell but still supported the execution, and she felt that the Reed family had left the conference call with some feelings of peace.
She revealed: “He was able to say he was sorry, and he made the point several times that the crime was senseless and pointless. He couldn’t really give us a reason why. He wasn’t belligerent, he didn’t raise his voice.
It was very civil. I did ask him at one point if he had forgiven himself, and he got emotional and he said, ‘No.’”
By this time, original jury forewoman Jennifer Day had moved on with her life, married, and embarked upon a new career. She now wishes that she had never served on the jury and had never met Powell. Jennifer had eventually broken contact with Powell after becoming concerned over the tone and content of some of his later letters. She now believes: “Everything that happened, he did it to himself.
At first I thought he was sorry, but it’s like he has a split personality. I can sleep at night now. He did what he did, and he’s getting what he deserves.”
Powell chose the electric chair over the default method of lethal injection. On March 18th 2010, he was led into the execution chamber at Greensville Correctional Center and strapped to the chair, observed by Lorraine and Kristie Reed through one-way glass. Powell was asked if he had any final words, but he remained completely silent, perhaps all too aware that he’d already said far too much.
He was pronounced dead at 9:09 pm. Following the execution, prosecutor Paul Ebert revealed that he had become emotionally involved in the case, and was now considered to be a member of the Reed family. He told the press: “I’ve been in this business a long time, and I’m pretty callous.
This case is more tragic than most I’ve witnessed because of the ages and the personalities of the victims. From the get-go, if anyone deserved the death penalty, Paul Powell deserved it. He’s the poster child for the death penalty in my opinion.
The survivors have really been traumatised by delay after delay. Hopefully they’re going to get some peace and closure after all these years.” Paul Ebert also observed: “Powell’s was a much more gentle death than Stacie’s.”
Reflections on a Bizarre Case
It’s not very often that you hear of cases in which the accused does a more efficient job of handling the prosecution than the prosecutors. And it’s equally rare that you hear of a convicted criminal escaping the death sentence, only to place himself right back on the electric chair with his own words. Exactly how you feel about the death of Paul Warner Powell may depend on how you feel about the death penalty in general.
I’ve never agreed with the death penalty myself, possibly because it was abolished in the UK long before I was born, and so the very concept of state execution seems quite disturbing to me. I would have thought that one of the most fundamentally important factors in this case, alongside justice for the Reed family, was to protect the public from Paul Warner Powell, and to ensure that he never walked free again. I would have felt satisfied in the knowledge that Powell would be incarcerated for the rest of his life, although it may have been a plan to keep him away from the stationary cupboard, just in case he felt the urge to pen another masterpiece.
But having said that, I have no idea how I would feel about the death sentence under very different circumstances. Kristie Reed also opposed the death penalty, right up until the day Powell walked into her home.
If Powell had left it another twenty years before writing the most important letter of his life and death, he would have escaped the electric chair yet again. Not because of any changes to the Double Jeopardy clause and not because of any specific changes to the Virginian laws which state that murder is only a capital offence if you attempt to rob your victim beforehand which is clearly crossing a line. Powell would have escaped the electric chair simply because Virginia abolished the death penalty in March 2021.
Some may argue that the Double Jeopardy clause is still open to abuse today in countries where it’s still considered to be a constitutional right. And some may still be scratching their heads at the fuzzy logic surrounding the legality of Paul Warner Powell’s retrial. It’s little wonder the man himself got so confused, particularly as he had been wrongly told by the Supreme Court of Virginia in 2001 that there could be no basis for a retrial.
But in this deeply unusual case, it seems to me that the judges involved in granting the retrial were very strict in following the law to the letter.
Key Takeaways
- Paul Warner Powell was executed for the murder of Stacie Reed and the rape and attempted murder of Kristie Reed.
- Powell’s initial death sentence was overturned due to legal technicalities, but he was later retried and sentenced to death again.
- Powell’s own letter confessing to the attempted rape of Stacie Reed provided crucial evidence for his retrial.
- The Reed family supported Powell’s execution, seeking closure after years of legal battles and delays.
- Powell’s case highlighted complexities in the Double Jeopardy clause and its application in capital murder trials.
Dana Ortiz covers prosecutorial mechanics, evidentiary procedure, and how investigations unwind decades after the original case file went cold.
Frequently Asked Questions
What crime did Paul Warner Powell commit?
Paul Warner Powell was convicted of the capital murder of Stacie Reed, and the rape and attempted murder of Kristie Reed.
Why was Powell’s initial death sentence overturned?
Powell’s initial death sentence was overturned because the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that the murder of Stacie Reed and the rape and attempted murder of Kristie Reed were separate incidents, and there was insufficient evidence to prove that Powell had attempted to rape Stacie before her murder.
What role did Jennifer Day play in Powell’s trial?
Jennifer Day was the forewoman of the original jury that recommended the death penalty for Powell. She later developed a relationship with Powell and testified on his behalf during his retrial, declaring that she loved him and believed he was sorry.
What was the significance of Powell’s letter to prosecutor Paul Ebert?
Powell’s letter to Paul Ebert provided new evidence that led to his retrial for the capital murder of Stacie Reed. In the letter, Powell confessed to attempting to rape Stacie before her murder, which was considered an aggravating factor for capital murder in Virginia.
How did Powell’s demeanor change during his retrial?
During his retrial, Powell was quiet, subdued, and occasionally broke down in tears, unlike his earlier court appearances where he displayed lofty arrogance and a sadistic nature.
What was the outcome of Powell’s retrial?
Powell was found guilty of capital murder and sentenced to death for a second time. His own boastful letter had dragged him right back to the electric chair.
What was the Reed family’s reaction to Powell’s execution?
The Reed family expressed feelings of peace and closure after Powell’s execution. Lorraine Reed noted that Powell conveyed remorse during a conference call and that she had forgiven him but still supported the execution.
What was the legal basis for Powell’s retrial despite the Double Jeopardy clause?
The legal basis for Powell’s retrial was that his original conviction for capital murder was overturned, not acquitted, by the Virginia Supreme Court. Therefore, the Double Jeopardy clause did not apply, as Powell had never been declared not guilty by a jury.
What was the significance of Virginia abolishing the death penalty in 2021?
If Powell had waited another twenty years, he would have escaped the electric chair because Virginia abolished the death penalty in March 2021.
What was Powell’s final statement before his execution?
Powell remained completely silent when asked if he had any final words before his execution.
Sources
- Original Casual Criminalist video: The Bizarre Case of Paul Warner Powell: The Man Who Sent Himself to the Electric Chair
- Hero image source by Canmenwalker / openverse, by.
