Friday, March 14, 2008
Morva gets death in capital murder case
The jury took just three hours to reach the unanimous recommendation.
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ABINGDON -- As William Morva learned that a jury had just recommended he be put to death as punishment for murdering two men, he smiled, nodded and loudly snapped his fingers.
"Like he won the lottery," Harold McFarland, the father of victim Derrick McFarland, said after Morva's eight-day trial came to a close in Washington County Circuit Court on Thursday afternoon.
It took jurors 3½ hours of deliberating Tuesday to find Morva, 26, guilty of three counts of capital murder and four other felony charges, but only three hours -- including the time they spent eating lunch -- to come to a unanimous decision about his punishment Thursday.
The jury recommended that Morva be sentenced to death for each of the three capital murder convictions -- one each for killing McFarland and Montgomery County Sheriff's Cpl. Eric Sutphin after he escaped from a deputy's custody in August 2006, and a third for killing two people in less than three years, a capital offense in Virginia.
He will be formally sentenced June 23 by Circuit Court Judge Ray Grubbs. It is rare, however, for a judge not to uphold a jury's recommendation.
After the June hearing, which will likely take place in Montgomery County, an automatic appeals process will begin.
At least a dozen people in the courtroom Thursday began to weep as Grubbs read the words "fix his punishment at death" from the jury's verdict forms.
Some were the victims' family members and friends, who packed the wooden benches on the side of the courtroom behind prosecutors.
Others were Morva's mother, Elizabeth Morva, and several of his friends who had testified on his behalf a day earlier.
Elizabeth Morva put her hand on her forehead and began to cry. She declined to comment after the hearing.
As the weeping of Morva's friends grew louder behind him, Morva turned to them and mouthed the words, "Don't worry."
Two Montgomery County deputies stood in front of him, two stood at the courtroom's entrance, and two more stood next to him near an exit door, along with Washington County Sheriff Fred Newman. Two Washington County deputies stood at the front of the courtroom, and nearly a dozen Montgomery County deputies -- in plainclothes because they had come to watch the trial -- filled a back bench.
The jury also recommended Morva serve five years in prison for escaping, five for the assault and battery of Montgomery County Sheriff's Deputy Russell Quesenberry, and three each for two counts of using a firearm in the killings.
With the 38 years Morva is already serving in a string of botched theft attempts in 2005, the convictions would keep him in prison for 54 years.
The jury had only two sentencing options after it found him guilty of capital murder: death or life in prison with no chance of parole.
Montgomery County Sheriff Tommy Whitt, who was very close with Sutphin, said he had resigned himself to the fact that Morva could be sentenced to life in prison but was pleased he was sentenced to death.
"We'll never forget this and we'll never get over this," he said of Sutphin's killing. "The way that we lost him was certainly answered for today."
McFarland's wife, Cindy McFarland, said she could not have been happier.
"I'm very happy, extremely happy," she said, smiling and red-faced from crying. "I can't even express that enough."
Cindy McFarland and Derrick McFarland's parents, Rosalind and Harold McFarland, all said they aren't necessarily supporters of the death penalty but believe it is the appropriate punishment for Morva.
For some people, Harold McFarland said, life in prison would be an appropriate punishment because a criminal would have to spend every day thinking about the crimes he had committed.
But for Morva, who publicly has shown no remorse for killing McFarland and Sutphin, "there's not going to be any rehabilitation," Harold McFarland said.
Cindy McFarland said it was hard to hear some of the details that came out during nearly five days of testimony in the case.
She and her husband's parents knew that Derrick McFarland had been shot in the face, she said, but they didn't know he had been shot from less than two feet away.
They also didn't know about the traumatic effects his killing had on the people who were in Montgomery Regional Hospital when he was shot, including a nurse who said she felt guilty because she had asked McFarland to stand in the hallway where he later was killed.
"She has no need to feel guilty," Cindy McFarland said.
Sutphin's widow, Tamara Sutphin, left the courthouse by a back door after Thursday's hearing, without commenting.
As they carried boxes of documents out of the courthouse, Morva's defense team didn't have much to say.
"It's a difficult case for everybody," Tom Blaylock said.
Tony Anderson said he respected the jury's verdict.
At one point as the verdicts were read Thursday, Morva patted Anderson on the back.
Montgomery County Commonwealth's Attorney Brad Finch said he was very pleased with the verdict, proud of his office and grateful to the staff at the Washington County Courthouse for being so accommodating.
Finch -- whose work was praised often by deputies and victims' family members throughout the trial -- said he spent "many long nights, many weekends for months" preparing for the case and was glad to see it come to a close.
To consider recommending the death sentence for Morva, jurors had to unanimously find either that he was a future danger to society or that at least one of the killings met the legal definition of "vile."
They found that he was a future danger and that both of the killings were vile.
