156
Opinion of the Court
hurt or shoot him, petitioner assured him he would not be harmed. Having thus assured McClelland, petitioner fired six pistol shots into the back of his head in rapid succession. 233 Va., at 341-342, 356 S. E. 2d, at 172-173.
Leaving McClelland's dead body on the side road, petitioner and Tucker returned to the intersection where they had seized him. Petitioner, telling Tucker he wanted to destroy McClelland's car as evidence, doused its interior with gasoline and lit it with a match. Id., at 341-342, 356 S. E. 2d, at 173.
Petitioner and Tucker were later arrested and indicted in the Circuit Court of the city of Suffolk on several counts, including capital murder. Having evidence that petitioner had announced before the killing that "he was going to get" McClelland for having fired his wife from her job as a sales-woman at the Murphy's Mart, and that petitioner had told other witnesses after the killing that he had performed it, the prosecutor entered into a plea bargain with Tucker. In return for being tried for first-degree murder instead of capital murder, Tucker would testify at petitioner's trial about events leading up to the killing and would identify petitioner as the actual "trigger man." Id., at 331, 356 S. E. 2d, at 167.
B
On Monday, December 2, 1985, petitioner's trial began. Petitioner's counsel moved that the trial court order the prosecution to disclose the evidence it planned to introduce in the penalty phase. The prosecutor acknowledged that "in the event [petitioner] is found guilty we do intend to introduce evidence of statements he has made to other people about other crimes he has committed of which he has not been convicted." 14 Record 8. In particular, the prosecution intended to show that petitioner had admitted to a notorious double murder in Chesapeake, a city adjacent to Suffolk. Lisa Sorrell and her 3-year-old daughter, Shanta, had been murdered five months before McClelland was killed.
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