By Candace Rondeaux
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 10, 2006

Convicted killer John Y. Schmitt was executed by lethal injection last night in Virginia's death chamber for fatally shooting a security guard during a bank robbery seven years ago.

Schmitt, 33, was pronounced dead at 9:14 p.m. at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt, said Larry Traylor, a spokesman for the Virginia Department of Corrections.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) yesterday rejected a request for clemency. "Having carefully reviewed the petition for clemency and judicial opinions regarding this case, I find no compelling reason to set aside the sentence that was recommended by the jury, and then imposed and affirmed by the courts," Kaine said in a written statement.

Kaine's decision came after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected without comment a request to hear an appeal from Schmitt.

Schmitt was sentenced to death for shooting Shelton E. Dunning, 39, during a holdup at a NationsBank branch in Bon Air in February 1999. Dunning, who had been hired by the bank about a month after retiring from the Army and shortly before he was to be married, held the door for Schmitt moments before gunned him down.

After the shooting, Schmitt ordered tellers to dump nearly $36,000 in cash into a trash bag. Police arrested him three days later and eventually recovered the gun and about $27,000.

During Schmitt's February 2000 trial in Chesterfield County, his attorney maintained that the killing was not premeditated and that Schmitt accidentally fired the gun during a scuffle with Dunning near the bank vault.

Schmitt's attorney, Dana J. Finberg, reasserted that claim in a clemency petition filed with Kaine's office last month, saying that Warren Von Schuch, the Chesterfield County deputy commonwealth's attorney and the lead prosecutor on the case, deliberately withheld crucial evidence and suggested that Von Schuch, one of the state's most seasoned prosecutors, has demonstrated a pattern of "blatant misconduct."

Going forward with the execution, Finberg argued, would send a "message that violating the Constitutional rights of capital defendants risks only a slap on the wrist, while greatly enhancing the likelihood of the 'victory' of a death sentence."

In a phone interview, Finberg said: "It's not right to execute someone when you've got this kind of behavior going on"

The petition accused Von Schuch of illegally authorizing recordings of incriminating conversations about the murder between Schmitt and a key prosecution witness after Schmitt had obtained a lawyer. It also claimed that he failed to disclose during the trial important details about the witness's role that might have raised questions about the credibility of his testimony.

In a July ruling, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit upheld Schmitt's conviction and death sentence but criticized Von Schuch's handling of the case. The court wrote that the prosecution team had "displayed a disconcerting lack of respect for its sole responsibility to ensure 'that justice be done.' "

But Von Schuch maintains that defense attorneys were privy to all the evidence.

Schmitt "received a very fair trial," Von Schuch said.

Before his execution, Schmitt requested for his last meal cheese pizza, a cheese omelet with sausage, green peppers and onions, and white cake with white icing.

His last words were: "Come on with it."