Death Penalty News

On Wednesday, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam signed a bill into law abolishing the death penalty in the state after the Democratic-controlled legislature passed the measure late last month. "It is the moral thing to do to end the death penalty in the Commonwealth of Virginia," said the governor. Northam, a Democrat, held the ceremonial bill signing at the Greensville Correctional Center just outside Jarratt, Va., where the state houses its execution chamber. Virginia is the first state in what was the Confederacy to stop using the punishment. The commonwealth has executed more people than any other state since the first execution took place at Jamestown in 1608. Opponents of the death penalty cite the high cost, the possibility of executing the innocent and the disproportionate racial impact. Black defendants are more likely to face death sentences, especially when victims are white. "The death penalty is the direct descendant of lynching. It is state-sponsored racism, and ...

Tennessee plans to kill Billy Ray Irick next month by lethal injection. If the execution goes through on August 9, a few weeks before his 60th birthday, he will be the 7th person put to death in the state since 2000, the year executions returned to Tennessee. On death row at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, a short drive from downtown Nashville, Irick has faced at least 3 previous execution dates, most recently in the fall of 2014. But there is an urgency this time, his longtime attorney, Gene Shiles, says. "This one feels much more ominous." Irick was convicted in 1986 of raping and murdering a 7-year-old girl named Paula Dyer in Knoxville. He was arrested and confessed soon after the crime. Irick had stayed with the child's family for 2 years prior to the murder, according to court filings; defense attorneys "attempted to create reasonable doubt about the identity of the perpetrator" during the guilt phase of the trial, yet called "no witnes...

William C. Morva was executed by injection Thursday night for the capital murders of an unarmed security guard and a deputy sheriff during an escape in Montgomery County in 2006. Morva, 35, a former Chesterfield County resident whose lawyers said suffered from a chronic psychotic disorder, was pronounced dead at the Greensville Correctional Center. The execution occurred without any complications, according to Lisa Kinney, a spokeswoman for the Virginia Department of Corrections. At 8:59 p.m., a curtain barring the view of witnesses into the execution chamber was opened. Morva was lying strapped onto the gurney, with IV lines in his arms and was breathing deeply. His face could not be seen. He would raise his head slightly and then drop it every few seconds. At 9 p.m., Warden Eddie Pearson read the death warrant, then asked him, "Mr. Morva, do you have any last words?" "No," Morva replied. The 1st of 3 drugs was administered. His deep brea...

William Morva William C. Morva is scheduled to be executed Thursday night in Virginia, after supporters failed to convince Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) that Morva’s mental illness merited clemency and a life sentence in the 2006 murders of a sheriff’s deputy and an unarmed hospital security guard. McAuliffe, who is personally opposed to the death penalty, said he would not stop the execution because he is convinced Morva received a fair trial. The governor also said in a statement that the jury was fully informed about Morva’s mental condition. “After extensive review and deliberation, I do not find sufficient cause in Mr. Morva’s petition or case records to justify overturning the will of the jury that convicted and sentenced him,” McAuliffe said in a statement. As governor, McAuliffe blocked a scheduled execution in April, but has allowed two others to proceed. In seeking clemency, Morva’s attorneys said the jurors who sentenced him to death were not told about the s...