Dodd Was First As '93 Set Record For Executions -- Pace Is Expected To Increase This Year As Appeals Run Out

It started on the gallows at Walla Walla, where Westley Allen Dodd was hanged a year ago today for the sex-related killings of three young boys.

And it ended in the electric chair in Jarratt, Va., where David Mark Pruett died Dec. 16 for raping and fatally stabbing his best friend's wife.

Along the way, 1993 became a record year for executions in the United States. The 38 men put to death in 10 states were the most in any year since capital punishment resumed in 1977 after being halted for five years by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Although backers and opponents still argue the death penalty's merits and morality, both sides say the pace of executions is likely to continue increasing, based on the number of cases reaching the end of the appeal process.

"How much are people going to take? I would think at some point the public would start to have a distaste for it," said Pam Rutter, program coordinator for National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

But Glenn Lammi of The Washington (D.C.) Legal Foundation, which supports the death penalty, said the number of executions indicates that the public, who serve as jurors, finds the penalty appropriate.

In the year since Dodd's execution:

-- The number of people on the nation's death rows rose by more than 100, from 2,676 to 2,785.

-- Texas, which has 375 men and four women on death row, continued to lead the nation in executions, holding 17 last year.

-- Of the 38 men executed in the U.S., seven, including Dodd, went to their deaths after either dropping their appeals or deciding not appeal their sentences.

-- In Washington, three new convicted killers were sentenced to die and the sentences of two death-row inmates were overturned, putting the number of death-row inmates in this state at 11.

-- The state's longest-running death-penalty appeal, by Charles Campbell, ended 1993 where it started the year, awaiting a decision by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. On one of Campbell's appeal points, a federal district judge ruled that hanging is not cruel and unusual.

DODD WENT WILLINGLY TO DEATH

Five minutes after midnight Jan. 5, 1993, Westley Allan Dodd, 31, became the first person executed in Washington since 1963, and the first hanged in the U.S. since 1965.

It was a punishment Dodd accepted and fought for in court, choosing neither the lengthy appeals process available to condemned killers nor the less traumatic execution method of lethal injection.

Dodd was sentenced to die after admitting he killed 4-year-old Lee Iseli of Portland and Vancouver brothers William and Cole Neer, 10 and 11, in 1989. The killings, driven by Dodd's desire for sexual gratification, had been described in detail in his diary.

Two weeks after Dodd's death, Charles Stamper, 39, went to Virginia's electric chair for killing three co-workers. Stamper was the first of five men executed in Virginia last year and the first of 14 African Americans executed in the U.S. in 1993. Also executed were 19 whites, four Latinos and one Native American, according to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

Of the 11 men sentenced to die in Washington, three are African American and eight are white.

The state's newest death sentences come from King, Pierce and Spokane counties.

Blake Pirtle was sentenced in Spokane in July for killing two former co-workers at a Burger King; Sammie Luvene was sentenced in Tacoma in August for shooting a liquor-store clerk; and Cal Brown is to be formally sentenced this month after a jury last week decided he should die for strangling and stabbing Holly Washa of Burien in 1991.

TWO DEATH SENTENCES CHANGED

Two Washington inmates, David Rice of Seattle and Michael Furman of Kitsap County, were removed from death row in 1993, their sentences changed to life in prison without parole.

U.S. District Judge Jack Tanner in Tacoma ruled in August that Rice, who killed four members of the Goldmark family in Madrona in 1985, had been denied his rights because he was not in court when his sentence was announced. Rice had been rushed to a hospital after swallowing packs of tobacco. State attorneys are appealing Tanner's ruling.

Furman's death sentence was overturned in September by the state Supreme Court because he was only 17 when he robbed, raped and fatally bludgeoned an 85-year-old woman in 1989. In a unanimous finding, the court said Washington's death-penalty law doesn't cover crimes committed by juveniles.

Executions in the U.S. stopped in 1972 when the Supreme Court ruled existing death-penalty laws were unconstitutional. They resumed in 1977 with the firing-squad death of Gary Gilmore in Utah.

Since then, 226 death sentences have been carried out in 21 states, largely in the South.

Washington was the only state to join the list in 1993 and is the only Northwest state to hold a post-1977 execution.

That may change tonight. Keith E. Wells, 35, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 12:01 a.m. at the Idaho State Penitentiary at Boise.

Wells, of Pocatello, has dropped his legal appeals and said he is willing to accept his sentence for the 1990 bludgeoning deaths of two people during a robbery at a Boise bar. Last-minute legal challenges from outside parties were expected.

VICTIMS' FAMILIES BEGIN HEALING

The flurry of last-minute legal activity in the Dodd case and the constant attention of the news media added to the pain felt by families of Dodd's victims - pain that has begun to heal over time.

"Now that he's out of the picture, I've been able to concentrate on my own well-being and that of my other son," said Robert Iseli, Lee's father. "Nothing could bring back my son, but it's good to know he (Dodd) isn't going to pop up some time in the future."

A lawsuit brought by the families of Dodd's victims was settled out of court, with the families receiving more that $375,000 from the state, Asotin County and a Bellevue psychologist. The suit, originally filed as a $30 million claim, alleged that Dodd, who had several previous offenses but served little jail time, would have been in prison in 1989 if it had not been for bureaucratic negligence.

Dodd's older brother, Greg, said time has also helped put some distance between him and the pain caused by his brother's case. He remains angry, however, that Dodd's family learned the execution was accomplished from television news, rather than an official call from the prison.

"There are memories, some bitter ones," he said, "but things are working out. Time goes on."

--------------------. EXECUTIONS BY STATE . IN 1993: . --------------------. Texas 17 . Virginia 5 . Missouri 4 . Florida 3 . Arizona 2 . Delaware 2 . Georgia 2 . California 1 . Louisiana 1 . Washington 1 .

-------------. EXECUTIONS . IN THE U.S. . -------------. 1977 1 . 1978 0 . 1979 2 . 1980 0 . 1981 1 . 1982 2 . 1983 5 . 1984 21 . 1985 18 . 1986 18 . 1987 25 . 1988 11 . 1989 16 . 1990 23 . 1991 14 . 1992 31 . 1993 38 .

Source: NAACP Legal Defense Fund

---------------------------------- INMATES ON DEATH ROW IN WASHINGTON ---------------------------------- -- Charles Rodman Campbell, 39, sentenced in 1982 for stabbing two women and an 8-year-old girl in Clearview, Snohomish County. -- Patrick James Jeffries, 58, sentenced in 1983 for shooting a couple that had befriended him in Port Angeles. -- Benjamin J. Harris III, 46, sentenced in 1984 for the contract shooting death of a man in the Hilltop neighborhood of Tacoma. -- Mitchell E. Rupe, 39, sentenced in 1985 for shooting two bank tellers during a robbery in Tumwater. -- Brian Keith Lord, 33, sentenced in 1987 for fatally beating a Poulsbo-area teen-ager who resisted sexual assault. -- Gary Michael Benn, 48, sentenced in 1990 for shooting his half-brother and another man in a dispute over sharing insurance money after an arson and burglary in Pierce County. -- Jonathan Lee Gentry, 37, sentenced in 1991 for fatally bludgeoning a 12-year-old girl in Bremerton. -- James Leroy Brett, 24, sentenced in 1992 for shooting a Clark County man during a robbery attempt. -- Blake Richard Pirtle, 25, sentenced in 1993 for stabbing and beating two of his former co-workers at a fast-food restaurant in the Spokane area. -- Sammie Lee Luvene, 27, sentenced in 1993 for the fatal shooting of a liquor-store clerk in Milton, Pierce County. -- Cal Coburn Brown, 35, sentenced by a jury last week for the rape, torture and stabbing death of a 22-year-old Burien woman in May 1991. (He is due to be formally sentenced by a judge next month.)