Joseph M. Giarratano (August 26, 1957 – October 6, 2024) was an American murderer and prisoner who served in Deerfield Correctional Center in Southampton County, Virginia, and was on death row until having his sentence commuted to life imprisonment.
[1] 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 lost state and federal appeals due to procedural rules that barred review of errors that were not objected to at the time of trial.
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.
[6] 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.
[10] While on death row at Mecklenburg Correctional Center, Giarratano became free of his addiction, and also of the tranquilizer prescribed by prison doctors.
He worked to improve conditions in Virginia prisons, fighting for "increased access for visitors and confidentiality of communications with lawyers".
[13] 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.
Newly available DNA testing, conducted post-conviction in 1993, called into question whether Washington had committed the crime for which he had been sentenced to death.
Virginia has what defense attorneys characterize as strict procedural rules "severely limiting the introduction of new evidence and raising of objections after the trial".
There he set up a 14-week course at the prison on non-violence, with the help of columnist Colman McCarthy of the Washington Post, who had founded the Center for Teaching Peace.
NBC nightly news covered the non-violence program; it received donations, including a grant from the Catholic Campaign for Human Development.
It was later reported in the Richmond Times Dispatch that he was transferred to Utah Supermax because the Virginia Corrections Director "had a politically hot prisoner that he wanted get rid of".
At a hearing in 2004, his counsel was seeking this physical evidence in order to conduct DNA testing to exclude Giarratano from the scene.