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Near Death Experience -- D.C. lawyer Paul Khoury defends convicted prison murderer Joe Payne
Blast from the past. I'm throwing out old newspapers, and I came across this article. The Washington City Paper used to have long, long articles. This one went on for 18 tabloid pages in print, though it took only the top half of each page. The bottom half of each page was devoted to paid advertising.
It was not unusual for issues of the Washington City Paper back then to be 128 pages long.
Near Death Experience
D.C. lawyer Paul Khoury spends most days representing companies that do business with the government. How did he end up defending convicted prison murderer Joe Payne?
JOHN CLOUD DEC 6, 1996 12 AM
....
From the beginning, Khoury knew it was a messy case, both physically and legally. Early on a Sunday morning in 1985, someone in the Powhatan Correctional Center—where Payne was already serving a life sentence for the 1981 slaying of a store clerk—incinerated David Dunford, another inmate. The assailant padlocked Dunford's cell, tossed in a can of paint thinner and a lighted book of matches, and stood back as the can exploded into flying shards of metal and flames.
An inmate in the cell across from Dunford's spilled his coffee after he heard the blast. Startled guards rushed around trying to break the padlock and extinguish the blaze, but the fire burned Dunford over more than two-thirds of his body. During the next nine days, the assailant no doubt dwelled in paranoia as Dunford hung on. And no doubt the killer breathed a heavy sigh when Dunford finally succumbed to his wounds without naming his attacker.
Khoury didn't represent Payne when he was first tried for Dunford's murder. In fact, he didn't get the case until after Payne had lost not only his trial, in April 1986, but also his appeal to the Virginia Supreme Court, in June 1987. The first document from the case that Khoury read was the state Supreme Court's decision, and it wasn't promising. "If you're just to look at that, you think, man, this is a loser—a dog of a case. There's nothing here, nothing to argue," Khoury recalls.
But he figured that most death-penalty cases look dismal after the first appeal fails. There was no reason to think the next case in the ABA pipeline would be any different. So he and Chip Yorkgitis, another young associate at Wiley, Rein, went to the firm's top brass and asked permission to take the case, which they quickly received. But when Khoury and Yorkgitis scratched the surface, holes in the government's case against Payne slowly opened.
....
Art accompanying story in the printed newspaper is not available in this archive: Darrow Montgomery.
D.C. lawyer Paul Khoury spends most days representing companies that do business with the government. How did he end up defending convicted prison murderer Joe Payne?
JOHN CLOUD DEC 6, 1996 12 AM
....
From the beginning, Khoury knew it was a messy case, both physically and legally. Early on a Sunday morning in 1985, someone in the Powhatan Correctional Center—where Payne was already serving a life sentence for the 1981 slaying of a store clerk—incinerated David Dunford, another inmate. The assailant padlocked Dunford's cell, tossed in a can of paint thinner and a lighted book of matches, and stood back as the can exploded into flying shards of metal and flames.
An inmate in the cell across from Dunford's spilled his coffee after he heard the blast. Startled guards rushed around trying to break the padlock and extinguish the blaze, but the fire burned Dunford over more than two-thirds of his body. During the next nine days, the assailant no doubt dwelled in paranoia as Dunford hung on. And no doubt the killer breathed a heavy sigh when Dunford finally succumbed to his wounds without naming his attacker.
Khoury didn't represent Payne when he was first tried for Dunford's murder. In fact, he didn't get the case until after Payne had lost not only his trial, in April 1986, but also his appeal to the Virginia Supreme Court, in June 1987. The first document from the case that Khoury read was the state Supreme Court's decision, and it wasn't promising. "If you're just to look at that, you think, man, this is a loser—a dog of a case. There's nothing here, nothing to argue," Khoury recalls.
But he figured that most death-penalty cases look dismal after the first appeal fails. There was no reason to think the next case in the ABA pipeline would be any different. So he and Chip Yorkgitis, another young associate at Wiley, Rein, went to the firm's top brass and asked permission to take the case, which they quickly received. But when Khoury and Yorkgitis scratched the surface, holes in the government's case against Payne slowly opened.
....
Art accompanying story in the printed newspaper is not available in this archive: Darrow Montgomery.
