THE US COMMONWEALTH of Virginia has become the country’s 23rd state and the first in the South to abolish the death penalty
The move represents a dramatic shift in policy for the commonwealth, which had the second-highest number of executions in the US.
It is the culmination of a years-long battle by Democrats who argued the death penalty has been applied disproportionately to people of colour, the mentally ill and the poor.
Republicans unsuccessfully argued that the punishment should remain a sentencing option for especially heinous crimes and to bring justice to victims and their families.
But Virginia’s new Democratic majority, in full control of the General Assembly for a second year, won a debate on the issue last month when both the Senate and House of Delegates passed bills banning capital punishment.
Governor Ralph Northam, a Democrat, signed the new law in a ceremony under a tent after touring the execution chamber at the Greensville Correctional Centre, where 102 people have been put to death since executions were first held there in the 1990s.
“There is no place today for the death penalty in this commonwealth, in the South or in this nation,” Northam said shortly before signing the legislation.
He added that the death penalty has been disproportionately applied to black people and is the product of a flawed judicial system that does not always get it right.
Since 1973, more than 170 people have been released from death row after evidence of their innocence was uncovered, he said.
“We can’t give out the ultimate punishment without being 100% sure that we’re right, and we can’t sentence people to that ultimate punishment knowing that the system doesn’t work the same for everyone,” Northam said.
Virginia has executed nearly 1,400 people since its days as a colony.
In modern times, the state is second only to Texas in the number of executions it has carried out, with 113 since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Centre.
Only two men remain on Virginia’s death row: Anthony Juniper, who was sentenced to death in the 2004 killings of his ex-girlfriend, two of her children, and her brother; and Thomas Porter, who was sentenced to die for the 2005 killing of a Norfolk police officer.
Their sentences will now be converted to life in prison without parole.
In addition to the 23 states that have now abolished the death penalty, three others have moratoriums in place that were imposed by their governors.
Death penalty opponents say passing the legislation in Virginia could mark the beginning of the end for capital punishment in the South, where most executions currently take place.
“Virginia’s death penalty has deep roots in slavery, lynchings and Jim Crow segregation,” said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Centre.
“The symbolic value of dismantling this tool that has been used historically as a mechanism for racial oppression by a legislature sitting in the former capital of the Confederacy can’t be overstated.”
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