29 November 2018 :

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit unanimously overturned the death sentence of for Mark Lawlor. Lawlor admitted raping, killing Genevieve Orange in 2008, but court says expert testimony was wrongly limited. Mark E. Lawlor, now 53, White, is 1 of only 3 people on Virginia's death row. He used a frying pan and a hammer to bludgeon 29-year-old Orange to death in September 2008. Lawlor then sexually assaulted the unconscious woman, prosecutors said. Lawlor did not contest his guilt at trial in February 2011, but claimed he was so drunk and high that he did not have the willful intent necessary to be convicted of capital murder. A Fairfax jury disagreed. At sentencing, Fairfax prosecutors argued both that Lawlor's crime was so vile that it merited the death penalty, and that he posed such a future danger to society that he also deserved the death penalty. Though the jury had to find only 1 of the "aggravating factors" in the case, it found both, and Fairfax Circuit Court Jonathan C. Thacher imposed the jury's death penalty on June 23, 2011 (see). But defense lawyers argued that Thacher had wrongly prohibited one of their experts from testifying about Lawlor’s future dangerousness in prison. Defense attorneys in death penalty cases present mitigating evidence to convince a jury that a life sentence is more appropriate than death. Thacher ruled that the expert must testify about Lawlor's potential dangerousness in all of society, not merely prison, and limited his testimony. The Virginia Supreme Court and a federal district court both ruled that Thacher's rulings were correct. On Tuesday, a 3-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit declared that all 3 of those courts got it wrong.