It's been a little more than a year since a federal jury gave two Mingo County residents the death penalty for killing a federal drug informant in 2005.

But George "Porgy" Lecco and Valerie Suzette Friend aren't on death row, awaiting execution.

They're not even in federal prison. Lecco, 58, is being held at South Central Regional Jail, while Friend, 45, is incarcerated at the Boyd County Jail in Kentucky.

In fact, they haven't been sentenced.

In the months since the jury reached its verdict, making the pair the first people to face the death penalty in West Virginia since the state did away with capital punishment in 1965, defense lawyers have made repeated arguments for a new trial. (In special cases, federal prosecutors can receive permission from the U.S. attorney general to pursue the death penalty, even in the 12 states that have abolished capital punishment on the state level.)

Two such motions are pending in front of U.S. District Judge John T. Copenhaver Jr.

Historic verdict

On May 29, 2007, reporters rushed out of Copenhaver's courtroom in the Robert C. Byrd U.S. Courthouse in Charleston to relay the news: The jury had approved the death penalty.

Between the guilt and sentencing phases, Lecco and Friend's trial lasted more than a month.

During testimony, the jury heard that Lecco sold cocaine out of Pizza Plus, his Red Jacket restaurant, reportedly earning more from drug sales than he did from selling food. After federal agents raided the pizzeria in February 2005, Lecco agreed to provide them with information about the thriving drug trade in Mingo County.

He even introduced them to Carla Collins, a 33-year-old single mother, whom he thought would make a good confidential informant.

But contrary to his arrangement with the government, Lecco continued to sell cocaine, prosecutors said. Fearing that Collins was providing investigators with information about his ongoing drug activity, Lecco arranged to have her killed by Friend.

In exchange for the murder, Lecco promised to give Friend cocaine, prosecutors said.

Two women, Patricia Burton and Carmella Blankenship, testified that they had been out driving around with Collins and Friend on April 16, 2005. At the end of a long, cocaine-fueled night, the quartet ended up at an abandoned trailer outside Newtown, where Friend shot Collins and beat her to death, according to Burton and Blankenship.

Collins' body was found nearby two months later in a shallow grave dug by Walter Harmon Jr., who testified that he was also acting on Lecco's instructions when he torched the trailer to destroy evidence of the murder.

The defense argued that Burton and Blankenship's accounts of the murder differed, leaving open the possibility that each was lying to conceal her own guilt. Prevalent drug use also made government witnesses' memories unreliable, they said.

After deliberating for two days, the jury found Lecco and Friend guilty on all counts, including using a firearm to commit murder during a federal investigation and killing someone assisting the government in a federal investigation, the two counts that carry the death penalty.

Two defense motions not yet ruled on

But George "Porgy" Lecco and Valerie Suzette Friend aren't on death row, awaiting execution.

They're not even in federal prison. Lecco, 58, is being held at South Central Regional Jail, while Friend, 45, is incarcerated at the Boyd County Jail in Kentucky.

In fact, they haven't been sentenced.

In the months since the jury reached its verdict, making the pair the first people to face the death penalty in West Virginia since the state did away with capital punishment in 1965, defense lawyers have made repeated arguments for a new trial. (In special cases, federal prosecutors can receive permission from the U.S. attorney general to pursue the death penalty, even in the 12 states that have abolished capital punishment on the state level.)

Two such motions are pending in front of U.S. District Judge John T. Copenhaver Jr.

Historic verdict

On May 29, 2007, reporters rushed out of Copenhaver's courtroom in the Robert C. Byrd U.S. Courthouse in Charleston to relay the news: The jury had approved the death penalty.

Between the guilt and sentencing phases, Lecco and Friend's trial lasted more than a month.

During testimony, the jury heard that Lecco sold cocaine out of Pizza Plus, his Red Jacket restaurant, reportedly earning more from drug sales than he did from selling food. After federal agents raided the pizzeria in February 2005, Lecco agreed to provide them with information about the thriving drug trade in Mingo County.

He even introduced them to Carla Collins, a 33-year-old single mother, whom he thought would make a good confidential informant.

But contrary to his arrangement with the government, Lecco continued to sell cocaine, prosecutors said. Fearing that Collins was providing investigators with information about his ongoing drug activity, Lecco arranged to have her killed by Friend.

In exchange for the murder, Lecco promised to give Friend cocaine, prosecutors said.

Two women, Patricia Burton and Carmella Blankenship, testified that they had been out driving around with Collins and Friend on April 16, 2005. At the end of a long, cocaine-fueled night, the quartet ended up at an abandoned trailer outside Newtown, where Friend shot Collins and beat her to death, according to Burton and Blankenship.

Collins' body was found nearby two months later in a shallow grave dug by Walter Harmon Jr., who testified that he was also acting on Lecco's instructions when he torched the trailer to destroy evidence of the murder.

The defense argued that Burton and Blankenship's accounts of the murder differed, leaving open the possibility that each was lying to conceal her own guilt. Prevalent drug use also made government witnesses' memories unreliable, they said.

After deliberating for two days, the jury found Lecco and Friend guilty on all counts, including using a firearm to commit murder during a federal investigation and killing someone assisting the government in a federal investigation, the two counts that carry the death penalty.

Two defense motions not yet ruled on

In January, Copenhaver put Lecco and Friend's sentencing on hold until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Baze v. Rees, a Kentucky case questioning the constitutionality of death by lethal injection.

Lethal injection is used in Indiana, where Lecco and Friend would likely be put to death because West Virginia has no facilities for carrying out an execution.

Although the Supreme Court ruled in April that the three-drug cocktail used in executions does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment, no sentencing date has been set for Lecco and Friend.

In November, Copenhaver denied the defendants' motion for a new trial based on 39 errors they claim took place during the trial. He has not ruled on two additional defense motions to set aside the jury's verdict.

The first, put forth by Kevin McNally, a member of the anti-capital punishment Federal Death Penalty Resource Project who serves on Friend's defense team, argues that the death penalty is applied more often when the murder victim is a white woman.

According to his analysis of more than 1,000 federal death penalty cases, only 10 percent of the victims were white women, McNally said. When those cases go to a jury, half of them result in a death sentence, he said.

The unfair application of the death penalty depending on the race and sex of the victim makes it unconstitutional, he argued.

"If Congress passed a law that killers of white females should [overwhelmingly] receive the death penalty, you would strike that down in a heartbeat," McNally told Copenhaver. "Essentially, that's what's happening."

The second motion for a new trial centers on juror misconduct.

At a hearing in December, a juror admitted that he lied on a questionnaire given to potential jurors before the trial began, failing to disclose his prior arrests for driving under the influence and possession of marijuana.

He also did not reveal his own history of drug use, or that he was the subject of an open federal investigation into allegations of possession of child pornography by the same U.S. Attorney's Office that was prosecuting Lecco and Friend.

The juror was issued a target letter in October 2003, but never was charged.

Federal prosecutors eventually decided not to pursue the child porn case against the juror, deciding that the allegations made against him were not supported by evidence.

The matter intersected Lecco and Friend's case when an FBI agent contacted the juror during their trial to make arrangements for returning his computer equipment.

The juror's intentional omissions meant that he was biased in favor of the government, defense lawyers argued.

"When he became a juror in the Lecco/Friend case, it would be no stretch at all for him to perceive an opportunity to curry favor with the prosecutive office which would not let go of his ... coattails, or that, at a minimum, that it would be unwise for him to become an obstacle to a unanimous verdict in favor of the government," the defense memorandum reads.

Even if Copenhaver denies the defense's motions, the executions of Lecco and Friend aren't exactly imminent. The appeals process - first to the state Supreme Court, then possibly to the U.S. Supreme Court - in death penalty cases typically lasts for years.

To contact staff writer Andrew Clevenger, use e-mail or call 348-1723.