Page 4-Wednesday, August 11,1982-The Michigan baily
Coppola executed
after judge's delay
RICHMOND, Va. (AP)- Frank Cop-
pola was electrocuted at 11 p.m. last
night after the U.S. Supreme Court
cleared the way for his execution.
The court, acting by conference call,
announced its decision at 10:26 p.m.,
overturning a stay issued earlier by
Judge John Butzner Jr. of the 4th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond.
COPPOLA, A 3$-year-old former
policeman, hot dog vendor and bar
bouncer, insisted he was innocent of the
1978 murder of Muriel Hatchell, 45,
whose skull was bashed in during the
robbery of her Newport News home..
But he said he was ready to die to
preserve his dignity and spare his
family further agony.
The execution would be the nation's
fifth since the U.S. Supreme Court
upheld the constitutionality of the death
penalty in 1976, and the first since
Steven Judy was electrocuted in In-
diana in March 1981. Virginia's last
execution was two decades ago.
After conferring with Gov. Charles
Robb about Butzner's decision,
Virginia Attorney General Gerald
Baliles dispatched two members of his
staff to Washington. They arrived at the
Supreme Court just before 7:30 p.m.
and filed papers asking Chief Justice
Burger to allow the execution to go for-
ward. Burger took the matter to his
fellow justices.
ROBB, WHO has the power to call off
the execution, was en route to Rich-
mond from the National Governors'
Association meeting in Oklahoma.
"I have seen nothing that would
cause me to interfere with the order of
the court," said Robb, a supporter of
the death penalty.
Opponents of capital punishment
planned to pray for the willing victim in
a church service and to parade outside
the Virginia Penitentiary in a can-
dlelight vigil.
REPORTERS and relatives were
barred from watching the execution.
The state instead chose six unidentified
witnesses who were to look on from a
glass-paneled cubicle as Coppola went
to his death in the electric chair made
by pentientiary inmates 75 years ago.
Housed in a bare, gray-floored room,
the chair was last used March 2, 1961,
when Carroll Lewis Garland was put to
death for the murder of a service
station attendant.
In Brief
Compiled from Associated Press and
United Press Internationatreports
Federal aviation board blames
crew for Air Florida crash
WASHINGTON - A federal safety board placed much of the blame for the
crash of an Air Florida jetliner seven months ago on the flight crew yester-
day, saying the pilot failed to ensure the aircraft was free of ice and did not
consider aborting the takeoff when he still had a chance.
The National Transportation Safety Board focused most of its attention on
de-icing of the Boeing 737, which crashed shortly after .taking off from
National Airport in a snowstorm Jan. 13, killing 78 people.
But the panel concluded that while de-icing procedures were un-
satisfactory, the responsibility of making certian the aircraft was free of ice
or snow which could interfere in its ability to fly rested with the plane's cap-
tain, Larry Wheaton.
"The probable cause of this accident was the flight crew's failure to use
engine anti-ice during ground operations and takeoff, their decision to take
off with snow and ice on the aircraft surfaces ... and the captain's failure to
reject a takeoff during the early stage when his attention was called to
anomalous engine instrument readings," the safety board concluded.
Tiny tax break stalls big bill
WASHINGTON - House Democratic opposition to a tiny new benefit for the
oil and timber industries has stymied action by congressional negotiators on
a package of aviation taxes included in a $98.9 billion tax-increase bill.
A House-Senate conference committee hoped to break the deadlock
yesterday and complete work on major parts of the measure, which also
would cut federal spending, mainly for Medicare and Medicaid, by about $17
billion over the next three years.
Also awaiting approval were several provisions that would bring the
government an estimated $8 billion during the period by clamping down on
tax cheats. Most parts of that package were accepted Monday night, in-
cluding new reporting requirements on state and local tax refunds, capital
gains and income from U.S. Savings Bonds.
Three Miami women murdered
MIAMI -Three Latin women were found shot to death in a suburban Miami
home yesterday, and police said the killings may be linked to the drug trade
and to the execution-style slaying of four Latin men last week.
A young boy was believed to have lived in the house where the bodies of the
three women were found but there was no sign of him when police, cting on
a tip from an anonymous caller, went to the home about 2 a.m.
A police investigator said it is possible the triple slaying could be in
retaliation for last week's murders, in which four Latin men were bound,
gagged and shot in the head.
Homicide Detective Robert Fiallo said the women were also shot but he
refused to discuss the location of their wounds.
Authorities were still trying to identify the slain women yesterday after-
noon.
French Jews protest killings
PARIS- Terrorists who killed two Americans and four French people in a
bloody assault on a Parisian kosher restaurant may be linked to an inter-
national gang that has attacked Jews in London and Vienna, French Interior
Minister Gaston Defferre said yesterday.
Defferre also pleaded with outraged French Jewish leaders to give up
plans to protest the assault Monday that wounded 22 other people, saying he
feared demonstrations could provoke more anti-Semitic violence.
But a militant Jewish group known as Betar went ahead with a demon-
stration yesterday night outside the Israeli Embassy. Small groups in the
crowd of about 1,000 jostled news crews filming the two-hour protest.
The demonstrators broke through a thin police line at the embassy and
marched up the nearby Champs Elysees, blocking traffic for nearly an hour
before dispersing peacefully.
Earlier at a news conference, Defferre said submachine-gun magazines
and bullet casings found in Jo Goldenberg's restaurant came from the same
type of Polish WZ-3 weapon used in the shooting of Israeli Ambassador
Shlomo Argov in London June 4. He also said those weapons were used in an
attack that killed two people outside a synagogue in Vienna, Austria, last
August.
Baby safe after kidnapping
WOODLAND, Calif.- Two men and two teenaged girls were held on
$100,000 bail yesterday on charges of kidnapping a 3-month-old boy from a
farmhouse at gunpoint and dangling him outside a van during an 80-mph
police chase.
Kidnappers had snatched the baby from the living room couch inside the
family's stucco farmhouse near Woodland. They kicked in a front window
and also abducted Jose Carrillo, a caretaker who later escaped.
About nine hours after the morning abduction, a sheriff's deputy saw a van
that matched the description of the suspects' vehicle which sped away nor-
thbound on California Interstate 5.
It was chased for 25 minutes at speeds up to 80 mph by cars of the Califor-
nia Highway Patrol, sheriff's deputies of Yolo and Colusa counties, and FBI
agents.
"Every time we got closer to the van, they started holding the baby out
like they were going to drop it, so we backed off," CHP officer Bill Bickell
said. "We didn't want to push him."
C
AP Photo
THE CHAIR WHICH was used to electrocute Frank Coppola stands em-
pty in front of the witness box at the Virginia State Penitentiary in Rich-
mond.