THE RECORD State Supreme Court Justice Warren McGraw has written opinions on behalf of a majority of the justices in several criminal cases since his election to the bench in 1998. They include: n STATE V. WALLACE (June 1999): The court unanimously reversed the dismissal of a burglary indictment against Rebekah Leah Wallace in a Tyler County case. Her defense had argued that the indictment failed to include the word burglariously in its language. * STATE V. CALLOWAY (December 1999): The court unanimously affirmed the multiple rape convictions of Ronald Lynn Calloway in a Kanawha County case. The ruling upheld the trial judges use of the Rape Shield Statute, meant to prevent a defendant from prejudicing a jury with irrelevant information about the victims sex life. * STATE V. SANDERS (May 2001): The court granted Lewis Franklin Sanders another hearing into whether he was mentally competent to stand trial after a Kanawha County jury convicted him of robbery. A judge later ruled that the mental health of Sanders, who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, had deteriorated and left him unable to assist in his own defense at the time of his December 1998 trial. When his condition improved through treatment, Sanders was retried in January 2002 and convicted. Justice Elliott Spike Maynard dissented from the ruling, but did not issue a separate opinion. * STATE V. GAMBLE (December 2001): The court unanimously denied a bid by Dean Gamble of Nicholas County to have the 100 days he spent in a North Carolina jail credited toward his West Virginia prison sentence for attempted check forgery. * STATE V. BOHON (May 2002): The court unanimously allowed Gypsy Buck Bohon to withdraw his guilty plea to second- degree murder. Among other grounds, Bohon argued he had been forced to plead guilty after a Monongalia County Circuit Court judge allowed statements he had made to his wife into his case as evidence. The law generally protects statements spouses make to each other as confidential. This marital privilege does not apply when the spouses talk in the presence of other people. Prosecutors argued Bohon had waived his privilege by talking to his wife in front of their 8-month-old child. McGraw wrote that a third party must be capable of understanding what the spouses are saying for the privilege to be waived. Maynard agreed with that finding and the rulings overall outcome, but believed Bohon had waived the privilege by making statements similar to what he had told his spouse to other people in later conversations. In a separate, concurring opinion, he wrote that other states have recognized a waiver in such circumstances. Granted a trial, Bohon was convicted of second- degree murder in October 2002 and sentenced to 40 years in prison.

The allegation that state Supreme Court Justice Warren McGraw is soft on crime is news to prosecutors like Bill Sadler.