Vt

Vt. debates life-or-death-row matter

Thomas Farragher
Globe Staff
02/02/99

FAIR HAVEN, Vt. - The piercing alarm that wailed for help moments after the bomb went off haunts them still. They knew the boy killed in the explosion. The delivery man who, unwittingly, brought the deadly parcel to a downtown doorstep is their friend.

So there is nothing impersonal about the death in this small town that has confronted Vermont with a question it hasn't faced in more than 40 years: If the government proves its case, should the killer be executed?

But, like the state itself, neighbors, friends - even relatives - of the victims of the March 1998 pipe-bombing that killed 17-year-old Christopher Marquis can reach no common ground about proper consequences for capital murder.

''I say go for the death penalty,'' said Mary Sullivan, who manages a delicatessen just off Fair Haven's historic town green. ''There were hundreds of people he could have hurt by his actions. I think he had just a total moral disregard for human life.''

Just yards away, a few doors down from where Marquis suffered his fatal wounds, there is little appetite for the ultimate sanction. ''I keep thinking of that passage from the Bible that says, `An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,''' said Charles Pregger. ''If we all followed that, we'd all be blind and toothless.''

Thirty-four years after Vermont banned capital punishment, the federal government announced last month that it would seek the death penalty against Chris William Dean, the 36-year-old Indiana man who, authorities say, shipped the bomb to Marquis after a dispute over the sale of citizens band radio parts arranged through the Internet.

In a state that hasn't executed anyone since 1954, the federal government's decision is stirring emotional debate about crime and punishment. Like Vermont, all of New England turned its back on capital punishment a generation ago. The region's last execution was Joseph ''Mad Dog'' Taborsky, who was electrocuted in Connecticut in 1960 for a murder-robbery spree.

But Dean's is a federal case and the US government reinstituted capital punishment 11 years ago.

While prosecutors prepare their case against Dean, a former truck driver who tinkered with radio equipment, his defenders argue that a man with no criminal record and no history of violence is no candidate to become the 21st inmate on federal death row.

''If there were a penalty phase to a trial, the government has to convince the jury to impose a sentence of death,'' said Dean's attorney, Bradley Stetler. ''I think in that respect, the traditions of Vermonters and the culture of Vermont will be important. I think we can't divorce what Vermont and Vermonters are from this equation.''

An unscientific poll of nearly 10,000 Vermont residents last year, conducted by Republican state Senator William Doyle, found that 45 percent registered support for the death penalty; 44 percent opposed it.

''In Texas, they hang 'em high,'' Doyle said. ''But in Vermont, we have a history of not having a death penalty. I think it would be a very difficult decision for any juror in this state.''

Indeed, both the state's top federal prosecutor, US Attorney Charles Tetzlaff, and Marquis's mother, Sheila Rockwell, who was seriously injured in the blast, have expressed philosophical opposition to state-sanctioned killing.

''But I took an oath when I took this job to enforce the laws of the United States,'' said Tetzlaff. ''The fact that Vermont does not have a death penalty does not impact on federal law.''

In accordance with that law, Tetzlaff last month signed a formal notice to seek a death sentence for Dean, citing a number of aggravating factors in the case, including Dean's alleged premeditation and shipping of the homemade bomb via United Parcel Service, potentially endangering anyone who came near the three planes and one truck that brought the package to its target.

Federal prosecutors say their case, while circumstantial, is strong.

Moments after the bomb exploded in Marquis's bedroom, his mother - a 3-inch-wide piece of metal imbedded in her right knee - told a police officer about a man in Indiana who had been making threatening calls to her son about a CB radio swap they had negotiated over the Internet.

On Marquis's computer desk, officials said they found a piece of paper containing a handwritten note with Dean's name, address, and telephone number.

According to court papers, Dean told a friend about obtaining instructions over the Internet for making a pipe bomb, the components of which included a clothes pin. The bomb sent to Marquis used a clothes pin in the triggering device.

During a search of Dean's home, federal agents found evidence that Dean had tested a device on his property in Indiana, court papers state.

Dean's attorney said he would not comment about the government's case against his client, or about the defense he will wage. But he said he was surprised and disappointed that the government has decided to seek the death sentence.

''He has no prior criminal history,'' Stetler said. ''He has no prior assaultive behavior. He has a stable employment history; a stable family situation. He is a generous, caring, decent person.

''These are not the type of people the government should be interested in killing.''

Dean's mother, Grace Lussmyer, said there is another more compelling reason to spare her son.

''Chris said he didn't do it and I believe him,'' she said. ''Chris was set up. I know it. ... That's what's so upsetting. How in the hell do you think you'd feel?''

Thirty-four people have been executed under the federal death penalty statute, the last in March 1963, when Victor Feguer was hanged in Iowa for kidnapping. If the government proves its case against Dean and the jury invokes the maximum sentence, Dean would take his place among 20 inmates sentenced to death since the federal death penalty was revived in 1988.

If that happens, Dean may make his last trip home to Indiana, where the federal government has prepared a lethal-injection death chamber at the US penitentiary in Terre Haute, about 150 miles from Dean's hometown of Pierceton.

''It would not be done in Vermont,'' said Tetzlaff.