Dewey Keith Venable, the 25-year-old convict charged with the murder of his cellmate, Richard Alvin Ausley, Virginia's most notorious pederast, is no long facing a possible death sentence.

Venable will now be tried for first degree murder next February, his lawyers say.

Ausley, 64, was strangled and beaten to death in January 2004. In 1973, he abducted a then 13-year-old boy and kept him buried in a box while repeatedly sexually assaulting him.

Look for more on this and other stories in tomorrow's Times-Dispatch.