The Virginian Pilot reports, "Death sentence appeal centers on killer's mental capacity."
Kevin Green, the attacker that day, is scheduled to be executed Tuesday night. Vaughan, who plans to attend with his two daughters, wonders what took so long.
"He was in my store, and in 90 seconds it was over," he said Friday. "Why did it take nine years to get to this?"
The execution could still be delayed. Green's attorneys have filed a last-minute appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court and a clemency petition with the governor.
If it occurs, Green will be the first person executed in Virginia after an 18-month hiatus, the second-longest stretch the state has gone without executing someone since capital punishment resumed in 1982.
His attorneys argue that the state will be illegally executing a mentally retarded man. The U.S. Supreme Court, in another Virginia case, ruled in 2002 that executing a mentally retarded person is unconstitutional.
Green's IQ has been listed as 65, 10 points below what is generally considered the threshold for mental retardation. But two federal judges in Norfolk determined that Green did not qualify as mentally retarded under the Supreme Court's and Virginia's two-prong test.
The Richmond Times-Dispatch has, "Man set to die tomorrow for Brunswick murder."
Kevin Green is scheduled to die by injection tomorrow night for the 1998 capital murder of a Dolphin woman during a robbery.
Green shot Patricia L. Vaughan four times inside Lawrence's Grocery, a small business that she and her husband, Lawrence T. Vaughan, opened in 1981 in the small community where they grew up in rural Brunswick County.
Green's execution is set for 9 p.m. at the Greensville Correctional Center, unless the U.S. Supreme Court or Gov. Timothy M. Kaine intervenes.
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