![]() Only then can we work towards restoring trust between those who have been victimized and a Commonwealth that has perpetrated such harm in its past. This moment of nationwide racial reckoning provides us with an opportunity to reconcile Virginia’s history of racial terror by acknowledging our past wrongs. ![]() According to the Virginia Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission on Capital Punishment, an accused is over three times as likely to be sentenced to death when the victim is white than when the victim is Black. The race of the accused is not the only racial factor that results in disparate treatment. ![]() Not a single white person during this era was executed for any crime other than murder. During this eighty-year period, Black people were executed for offenses including armed robbery and attempted sexual assault. It is imperative that we act swiftly on this historic opportunity.īetween 19, the Commonwealth executed 258 Black people, nearly six times as many Black people were executed than white people. We are on the cusp of a groundbreaking opportunity to end the egregious wrong of state-sanctioned execution in Virginia. Delegate Mike Mullin’s HB 2260, Delegate Carter’s HB 1779, and Senator Surovell’s SB 1165 would formally abolish the death penalty, including the two defendants currently on death row in Virginia by communiting their death sentences to life-imprisonment. In tandem with Governor Northam’s legislation, Delegate Mike Mullin (D-Williamsburg), Delegate Lee Carter (D - Manassas), and Senator Scott Surovell (D - Fairfax) have patroned their own bills respectively in calling for the abolition of capital punishment. Although numerous abolition bills have been introduced in the General Assembly over the past several decades, Governor Northam’s legislation is of historical significance as the first to be introduced by a sitting governor. Since that fateful day in 1608, Virginia has since put to death a record-shattering 1,300 people, including the most women and young children of any state in the Union.įollowing Governor Northam’s call to abolish the death penalty during State of the Commonwealth address, Virginia is poised to become the first southern state to abolish capital punishment during the 2021 Session. The first execution in the New World took place in Jamestown in 1608, when Captain George Kendall was executed in Jamestown on charges of espionage. Our Commonwealth’s relationship with capital punishment spans over four centuries.
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