Joseph Roger O’Dell, III

This is old news, but I recently was researching for a civil case but came upon this case.  Guy was tried, fried and buried, but to this day death penalty opponents cite him as a case of an “innocent man” being put to death.  I was struck by the certainty of the Supreme Court on the one hand compared to the certainty of the anti-death penalty crowd on the other.  Worth a read I think.

FACTS [taken directly from the Va Supreme Court decision turning down his appeal.

         …On Tuesday, February 5, 1985, the victim, Helen Schartner, left a night club in Virginia Beach known as the County Line Lounge about 11:30 p.m. O’Dell left the same club sometime between 11:30 p.m. and 11:45 p.m. The next day, February 6, 1985, Schartner’s car was found in the parking lot of the County Line Lounge. Near 3:00 p.m. the same day, Schartner’s body was discovered among the reeds in a field near a muddy area behind another club, across the highway from the County Line Lounge. Tracks from tires consistent with the tires on O’Dell’s car were discovered in an area near Schartner’s body.

        Schartner had been killed by manual strangulation. She also had eight separate wounds on her head caused by blows from a handgun equipped with a cylinder. These head wounds produced extensive bleeding. A handgun with a cylinder was seen in O’Dell’s car about 10 days prior to the murder.

        Not more than two and a half hours after Schartner left the County Line Lounge, O’Dell entered a convenience store with blood on his face and hands, in his hair, and down the front of his clothes.

        Vaginal and anal swabs disclosed the presence of seminal fluid in the victim’s vagina and anus containing enzymes consistent with those in O’Dell’s seminal fluid.

        O’Dell had been living in the home of a woman friend, Connie Craig. Approximately a week before the murder, Craig ordered O’Dell from the premises. O’Dell called Craig about 7:00 a.m. on Wednesday, the morning after the murder, said that he had vomited blood all over his clothes, ² and stated that he wanted to talk with her before he left for Florida.

        When O’Dell reached Craig’s house at about 7:30 a.m., he said he wanted to sleep, and he slept until 9:30 or 10:00 o’clock that evening. When O’Dell awakened, he asked Craig how to remove the blood from his new blue-gray jacket.

        The next day, Thursday, about 1:00 p.m., O’Dell called Craig from his place of work and told her he had put his clothes in her garage, but he intended to take them out the following day. After the telephone conversation, Craig read the local newspaper’s account of the murder of Schartner. The account said the victim had last been seen at the County Line Lounge. When Craig remembered that O’Dell customarily visited the County Line Lounge on Tuesday nights, “something clicked.” Craig went to her garage and found a paper bag containing four pieces of bloody clothing, including a pair of jeans which also had mud on them. Craig brought these clothes into the house and called the police.

         Forensic evidence established that the dried blood on two of O’Dell’s articles of clothing was the same type as Schartner’s in each of the 11 blood classification systems analyzed. Only three out of a thousand persons are in this blood classification. O’Dell’s blood was not the same type as Schartner’s. O’Dell’s car was later seized and searched, and dried blood found on objects in the car also had several enzyme markers consistent with Schartner’s blood, but not O’Dell’s.

        During his incarceration, O’Dell told Steven Watson, a fellow inmate, he had strangled Schartner after she refused to have sexual intercourse with him….

The murder of Schartner was brutal. Schartner was strangled to death with a force sufficient to break bones in her neck and leave finger imprints on her neck. She was beaten so severely about the head that eight separate marks were left on her skull. A number of other injuries on her body indicated she attempted to ward off blows from a blunt object. The evidence also showed Schartner had been murdered during the commission of, or subsequent to, her rape.

        In considering the defendant, we find a lengthy criminal record. O’Dell, born in 1941, began his criminal career at the age of 13 with a juvenile conviction of breaking and entering. During the next three years, he was convicted five times of auto theft.

        In 1958, his career escalated to crimes of violence, with three assault convictions that year, as well as a conviction for threatening bodily harm. The following year, O’Dell was convicted of an attempted escape from the penitentiary. Only five months after his discharge from the penitentiary, O’Dell’s probation was revoked. He was convicted of five armed robberies and five unauthorized uses of motor vehicles, and sentenced to confinement in the penitentiary for 24 years. While he was in the penitentiary, O’Dell was convicted of second degree murder.

        After his parole from the penitentiary in July of 1974, O’Dell went to Florida, where he was convicted of a kidnapping and robbery, which occurred in February of 1975. The victim in that case testified as to the details of her robbery and subsequent abduction, as well as O’Dell’s assault upon her in an attempted rape. During that assault, she said O’Dell struck her several times on the head with his gun, choked her, and held a cocked gun to her head in his effort to force her to submit to his sexual advances. The Florida court sentenced O’Dell to a 99-year confinement, but in December of 1983 he was released on parole. Fourteen months after that release, Schartner was murdered. 

THE ANTI-DEATH PENALTY PEOPLE VERSION IS ALMOST DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSED.  The girlfriend who turned him in was jealous. The doorman saw that defendant never left until after midnight.  Deceased was heard arguing in a parking lot with another man.  The guy who found the body saw another man, not defendant, crouching near the body.  Defendant  happened to get in a fight at another bar after leaving. The semen left in the deceased was tested and found not to be that of the defendant. Another serial killer supposedly confessed, and has since been executed by Virginia.  See here and here.  I have no opinion as to whether he was “innocent” or not, but I do think that a) he was an idiot for representing himself; and b) Virginia needs to reform its criminal justice system.