Joseph Giarratano

Joseph M. Giarratano (born August 26, 1957) is a former prisoner who served in Deerfield Correctional Center, in Southampton County, Virginia, US.

Born in The Bronx on August 26, 1957, Giarratano grew up in circumstances described by The New York Times as similar to those of many juvenile offenders: "a fractured family, an abusive mother, a father he did not meet until they were inmates in the same Florida prison 16 years ago. It also includes an early exit from school and an even earlier introduction to drugs."

He became a scallop fisherman in Hampton Roads, Virginia.

Giarratano has said that he woke in the Kline apartment after a blackout and found the two women dead.

He was convicted, based on circumstantial evidence and his own confessions, of murdering Toni Kline and raping and strangling her 15-year-old daughter Michelle on February 4, 1979, in Norfolk, Virginia.

He has said that he was an addict for years and had blacked out on alcohol and drugs, waking to find the bodies.

He was sentenced to death, and incarcerated on death row for 12 years at the former Virginia State Penitentiary.

He is notable for having become a serious legal scholar, helping mount litigation to explore constitutional rights of prisoners.

Defense attorneys had mounted appeals to re-open his case in the late 1980s, based on what they said was new information, e.g. head and pubic hairs, sperm, finger prints, and bloody boot prints did not match Giarratano's. He lost state and federal appeals due to procedural rules that barred review of errors that were not objected to at the time of trial.

Giarratano was involved in a 1984 escape attempt with seven other men from the Mecklenburg prison.

Prison officials had an internal hearing and dealt with the men on an institutional basis.

Giarratano was an advocate for fellow death row inmate Earl Washington Jr.., and gained support for a pro bono defense of him, less than a month before his execution scheduled for September 1985.

He noted that Washington had an intellectual disability, which had not been considered at his trial or sentencing, and enlisted the help of Marie Deans and her network.

Counsel gained a stay to enable an appeal.

He was involved in preparing arguments for Murray v. Giarratano, 492 U.S. 1 (1989), which reached the United States Supreme Court.

It was an effort to enlarge the right to counsel.

This argument was upheld at the federal appeals court level, but in Murray v. Giarratano, the Supreme Court ruled that there is no constitutional right to appointed counsel in state habeas corpus proceedings, and that the rule applies equally to capital cases.

The case attracted international attention as his execution date was scheduled for February 1991.

Three days before the execution date, Governor Douglas Wilder commuted Giarratano's death sentence, with a pardon sentencing him to life imprisonment with a recommendation for new trial, and possibility of parole after 25 years imprisonment (after 13 years with allowance for time served).

Mary Sue Terry, the state Attorney General, refused to seek a retrial, stating that she was confident that Giarratano was guilty of killing Kline and her daughter.

After his pardon, Giarratano was transferred among different prisons, first in Virginia.

After being stabbed at one, he was transferred to prison in Utah and then to Illinois, under a state compact.

In a 1991 interview, he said that he assumed he killed them, but does not know.

He fled to Florida.

Feeling guilt, he turned himself in to police, and confessed to the murders.

The trial was quick, and he was convicted and sentenced to death for the two murders.

He later recanted his confessions.

While on death row at Mecklenburg Correctional Center, Giarratano became free of his addiction, and also of the tranquilizer prescribed by prison doctors.

After being introduced to law by another inmate, he began to study it intensively, becoming interested in constitutional law.

Giarratano has become noted as a legal scholar published in the Yale Law Journal and has assisted other prisoners with their cases.

In addition, he has sought to widen prisoners' rights, including to right of counsel, with an argument that was approved by the federal court of appeals but not the US Supreme Court.

He worked to improve conditions in Virginia prisons, fighting for "increased access for visitors and confidentiality of communications with lawyers".

He has developed as a scholar of constitutional law.

It gave him purpose and he began to help other prisoners.

He helped file habeas corpus petitions for himself and several other prisoners.

Newly available DNA testing, conducted post-conviction in 1993, called into question whether Washington had committed the crime for which Washington had been sentenced to death.

He was returned to Virginia in March 1997.

His counsel was seeking to locate physical evidence from the crime scene in 2004 in order to conduct DNA testing prior to his appeal to gain parole that year, the first time he would be eligible.

Norfolk and state authorities have said they believe all the biological evidence in the Kline case was destroyed.

On November 21, 2017, he was granted parole.