Virginia could become the first state in the South to outlaw capital punishment, if a new initiative succeeds.
Activists announced a new initiative seeking to end the death penalty in Virginia – a state with the 2nd highest number of executions only behind Texas.
The organization known as Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (VADP) is set to formally unveil the effort in Richmond later this week.
Victims of violent crime will deliver a letter from the VADP to the General Assembly, asking for the dramatic change to the commonwealth's penal code.
"The death penalty, it forces law enforcement to become killers," Michael Stone, executive director of the VADP, said. "And in many respects, it's not worth it."
3 men are currently on Virginia's death row, including one from Fairfax County.
Mark Eric Lawlor received a death sentence in 2011, after he raped and killed a Falls Church woman in 2008.
Lawlor's fate remains in limbo, after an appeals court said he deserves a new hearing.
Stone said the VADP has support for the measure from both Republicans and Democrats, as the organization began to set its sights on a concerted effort four years ago.
"I think it's a bit of an urban legend that this is a Democratic issue and Republicans are against a death penalty repeal," Stone said. "We've found exceptions to the rule on both sides of the aisle, because it's just not an effective measure anymore."
Gov. Northam said earlier this year he would sign a bill abolishing capital punishment, if the replacement measure called for a sentence of life without parole.
"In a sense, the death penalty is not about what the perpetrator did, but, it's about what kind of people are we," Stone said.
Source: WUSA news, Staff, November 19, 2019
Group seeks abolition of death penalty in Va. as Democrats prepare to take control of legislature
With Democrats soon to be in control of the legislature, Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty are seeking an end to the death penalty in Virginia.
The group announced Monday that 13 Virginians who have lost a family member to homicide are asking the General Assembly to make Virginia the 22nd state to abolish the death penalty. One of them will be speaking at a press conference in Richmond on Thursday.
Michael Stone, executive director of the group, said Monday that, "to be honest, we have been targeting 2020 for years as the time we would kick off an abolition campaign. From our point of view, the election just adds momentum to the possibility of us being the 1st southern state to end the death penalty."
"We've been planning for a long, long time to target 2020 for a variety of reasons," Stone said. "I think we've got enough conservative support that we can really have a serious debate, so, we'll see where it goes."
Earlier this year, a spokeswoman for Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam told the Richmond Times-Dispatch that, "if the General Assembly passed legislation to replace the death penalty with life without parole, the governor would absolutely sign it."
She added that although Northam is personally opposed to the death penalty he has pledged to uphold Virginia’s laws, including the death penalty, as did former Democratic governors Mark Warner, Tim Kaine and Terry McAuliffe.
Virginia has executed 113 persons since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the death penalty to resume in 1976, a toll second only to Texas with 568 over the same period. There are now just 3 persons on Virginia's death row.
The VADP’s position is that there are just 2 Virginia death row inmates because a federal appeals court ruled last year that the death sentence imposed in Fairfax County on Mark Lawlor was flawed and that his case is in limbo, Stone said.
The VADP said that Rachel Sutphin, of Christiansburg, will speak at Thursday's news conference in Richmond. Her father, Eric E. Sutphin, a corporal with the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office, was murdered in Blacksburg in 2006. His killer, William Morva, was executed in 2017, the most recent execution carried out by the state.
Sutphin will speak in favor of replacing Virginia’s death penalty with life in prison without the possibility of parole, the VADP said.
Efforts to end capital punishment in the legislature have failed in previous years.
"These citizens have come to understand that, far from bringing 'closure' to their grief, the death penalty brings only more trauma to their lives, as well as being an inefficient and ineffective means of justice," the group said in a news release.
A poll last year by the Pew Research Center found that 54 % of Americans favor the death penalty for people convicted of murder, and 39 % are opposed. Nevertheless, death sentences and executions have been trending downward for years.
Source: richmond.com, Staff, November 19, 2019
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde