Virginia would become the 23rd State the first southern state to repeal the capital punishment since it was reinstated by the US Supreme Court in 1976, the decision was made by the state’s Senate on the 3rd of February and supported by the Virginia State Gov. Ralph Northam who is a Democrat.
Democrats are increasing their distance from the death penalty, in fact President Biden pledged to abolish the federal capital punishment and the Democratic Sen. Scott Surovell, the bill's chief sponsor stated:
"I cannot think of anything that's more awful, unspeakable and wrong for a government to do than to use its power to execute somebody who didn't commit the crime they're accused of," he said during debate on the Senate floor before the vote. "The problem with capital punishment is that once it's inflicted you can't take it back -- can't be corrected."
The importance of this decision is demonstrated by the fact that both Republican and Democrats senators are going towards the same goal even if the Republicans wanted to amend the bill to include a minimum life sentence for aggravated murder without the possibility, however, some, bolder, Republicans state senators argued that Virginia should preserve the death penalty for certain types of cruel and depraved
crimes and some others raised concerns about justice for the victims and their family members.
The rate of use of the death penalty in Virginia has been worryingly high over the past years: 113 executions have been carried out, a number second only to Texas. Observing this enormous number is mandatory to remember that there are huge disparities between inmates and many wrongful conviction, which are just against humanity, as said also by the Democratic Del. Marcus Simon who stated that the government should not be in the business of killing human beings as it’s immoral and inhumane. Moreover, we cannot forget how costly this kind of punishment is for the state given the litigation involved.
Furthermore, the high amount of convicted stated above has been due to several factors such as poor defence representation and draconian procedural rules due to which judicial review has been denied often. What stated above shows how unfair using this type of punishment is, as will have a bigger impact on the poor and discriminated once. This view is supported by many cases, however the most example one dates back to the middle of the past century: on February 2, 1951, 5 inmates were executed, the largest number of executions carried out on a single day in Virginia, the 5 men were African American and were convicted to death by an all-white male jury in a trial lasted less than one day each. In addition, even if the U.S. Supreme Court declared the death penalty unconstitutional for crimes in which no one was killed, Virginia executed 73 Black defendants for rape, attempted, or armed robbery that did not result in death, while no White defendants were executed for those crimes.
Accordingly, to the widespread discrimination highlighted above, Michael Stone, the executive director of Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty and a supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement, related to the protests in response to the death of George Floyd last year, stated with joy that: “Not only the new legislation will it abolish the death penalty, but it will change the sentences of the two men still on death row from death to life in prison without parole.”
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