http://voices.washingtonpost.com/cri...h-row-app.html

Lawyers for a death row inmate asked the Virginia Supreme Court Tuesday
to overturn his sentence because a juror's co-workers urged her to give
him death.

Joshua Andrews, 27, was convicted in a 2002 shooting spree that left two
dead and three others injured in Virginia and New York.

Prosecutors said Andrews forced three men to undress and get into a
bathtub in a Dumfries-area apartment on Jan. 2, 2002, before shooting
them. Two of them died and another survived.

After that shooting, Andrews and another man fled to New York, where
they robbed and shot a convenience store clerk in Queens and shot
another man in the Bronx. They were convicted of attempted murder in
those shootings.

Andrews was acquitted in three other deaths.

During a break in the sentencing phase of Andrews' 2007 trial, a juror
returned to her job at a Washington, D.C., law firm, where her boss and
a co-worker urged her to sentence Andrews to death. One co-worker asked
€œWhy don't you just fry him?€�

Lawyers didn't find out about the contact until after the jury
recommended death, and a judge later held a hearing to question the
juror about the remarks. She testified that her boss was abusive and
belittling, but that his comments did not affect her judgment.

€œThis was her livelihood. She had to go back to her office day after day
and work in this case directly under someone€� who urged her to sentence
Andrews to death, said Matthew Engle, one of Andrews' attorneys.

Steven Witmer, senior assistant attorney general, acknowledged the
contact was inappropriate, but said the juror's poor opinion of her
supervisor shows she would not take his advice.

€œThis juror testified that she placed no value on the opinion of this
person in matters unrelated to her employment,€� Witmer said.

The justices asked whether the juror would have feared for her job if
she didn't take his advice.

Andrews' attorneys also argued that the trial judge erred by not
allowing a poem Andrews wrote to be introduced as mitigating evidence
during his sentencing, while allowing prosecutors to dehumanize him to
the jury.

At age 8, Andrews was pushed into a shed by some kids who set it on
fire. He was horribly burned and disfigured, and kids taunted him by
calling him €œcrispy critter€� and €œmummy.€�

Also as a child, Andrews went to visit his father on death row in Texas.
Before his father could be executed, another inmate stabbed him to death.

Police seized a poem written by Andrews describing his struggles as a
child and how the events had hardened him, but the judge would not allow
it as evidence. Meanwhile, the judge allowed prosecutors to refer to
Andrews as a €œkilling machine,€� leaving the jury with the instructions
to, €œTurn this machine off.€�

€œThere is no greater evidence that Josh Andrews is not a machine,€� Engle
said of the poem.

Witmer called the poem €œnothing more than self-serving hearsay€� and said
it was rightfully omitted.

Witmer did agree with Andrews' attorneys that the judge improperly
allowed the victim of an unrelated shooting to testify during the
sentencing phase of the trial. But Witmer said the testimony was
harmless because of all the other evidence relating to the vileness of
Andrews' crimes and his future dangerousness €” considerations that must
be made in death penalty cases.

Andrews' attorneys also questioned whether two of his convictions
constituted double jeopardy, the constitutional protection against being
tried twice for the same crime.

Jurors convicted Andrews of both killing more than one person as part of
the same act and of killing more than one person within a three-year period.

The justices could rule on the case by the fall.

Database: Virginia executions, 1982-present

This item has been updated since it was first published.