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capital punishment

Democracy

Virginia poised to become the first southern state to ban the death penalty

Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images

Virginia is poised to become the 23rd U.S. state—and first state in the South—to ban the death penalty after lawmakers on Monday approved legislation prohibiting the practice.

"We're dismantling the remnants of Jim Crow here in the New South. Abolishing the death penalty is another step on that journey," tweeted Democratic Del. Jay Jones, who's running for state attorney general.

Both chambers of the General Assembly passed earlier versions already this month. On Monday, the Senate passed the House bill in a 22-16 vote; the House then voted 57-43 on the measure to ban capital punishment. Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam has indicated his support for the measure.

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As Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.)—a former governor of Virginia and a co-sponsor of bicameral legislation to end the federal death penalty—wrote in a Friday op-ed at the Washington Post, "Virginia is the death penalty capital of the United States."

Beginning with the first execution under a colonial government in 1608, we have executed 1,390 people, more than any other state. Following the Supreme Court's decision restoring the death penalty in 1976, Virginia has executed more people than any state except Texas. And the painful history exposes the fundamental racism of capital punishment.

Kaine noted as an example that "even after the Civil War, when crimes such as rape were technically capital offenses for everyone, the ultimate punishment was used only against Black people. Fifty-six people were executed for rape or attempted rape in Virginia between 1908 and 1965—all were Black."

"Thankfully," Kaine wrote, "the repeal of the death penalty by its leading practitioner gives hope that work for justice is not in vain. Virginia's progress shows that it is possible for all."

Northam has previously indicated his backing of legislation to ban the death penalty, saying in a statement earlier this month that capital punishment is "fundamentally inequitable. It is inhumane. It is ineffective."

The governor further confirmed his support on Monday with a joint statement also signed by House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn (D-Fairfax) and Senate Majority Leader Dick Saslaw (D-Fairfax) and released after both chambers passed the legislation.

"Thanks to the vote of lawmakers in both chambers, Virginia will join 22 other states that have ended use of the death penalty," the three Democrats said. "This is an important step forward in ensuring that our criminal justice system is fair and equitable to all."

Once the bill becomes law, the two men with still lingering death sentences, Anthony Juniper and Thomas Porter, will face life in prison without parole.

This article first appeared on Common Dreams. You can read it here.

From Your Site Articles

Brandon Bernard's senseless execution shows just how wrong the federal death penalty really is

Brandon Bernard, 40, was executed at 9:27 pm Thursday night at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana for a crime he committed when he was 18.

"I'm sorry," Brandon Bernard said, opening his three-minute speech that would amount to his final words."That's the only words I can say that completely capture how I feel now and how I felt that day."

In 1999, Christian Vialva and three teen boys car-jacked Todd and Stacie Bagley in Killeen, Texas. The Bagley's were thrown in the trunk of their car and both were shot in the head. Bernard was not present for the abduction but was tasked with setting the car on fire to destroy the evidence.

Bernard believed that both of the Bagley's were dead, but Stacie was still alive in the trunk when Bernard set the car ablaze.

Vialva was executed for his involvement in the crime in September.

The Supreme Court Thursday night declined to intervene in Bernard's case. Although three justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Stephen Breyer said they would have granted the application to stay the execution. Five of the jurors in the original case have since changed their minds saying that they want his sentence commuted.

The trial became a cause celeb when Kim Kardashian West, daughter of famed attorney Robert Kardashian, advocated on Bernard's behalf on Twitter.

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Bernard clearly was a participant in a brutal act of violence and terror. But he was a teenager at the time and his involvement in Stacie's death was unintentional.

Bernard's death was completely avoidable because there had been a 17-year moratorium on federal executions until U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr reinstated them last July.

Barr said in a 2019 statement that "we owe it to the victims and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system."

Since there have been nine federal executions and four more are scheduled to take place before Trump leaves office on January 20.

Trump has been completely silent on all of the executions.

According to a former Trump senior staffer, he has no problem with using the most brutal form of state power on American citizens. "If it were up to him, we would return to the old days where it was eye-for-an-eye, tooth-for-a-tooth — or we would forget about proportionality altogether," the former official told The Daily Beast in July. "He would talk about lining up drug dealers and gang members in front of a firing squad."

via Tommy Woodard / Flickr

The administration's decision to go forward with the executions is also a break from historical norms. The federal executions are the first to have occurred during a lame-duck presidency in 130 years.

The state-sponsored killings are also completely arbitrary being that when Joe Biden takes office he vows to end them. Biden "opposes the death penalty now and in the future," press secretary TJ Ducklo said.

While it's easy to come to the conclusion that some acts perpetrated by humans are so heinous they should be punishable by death, capital punishment makes a very damning statement about the state that wields it and its citizens.

It's a statement that some humans are irredeemable and cannot be forgiven. It says that our criminal justice system is ultimately about punishment, not reform. It says the only way to enact justice for some victims is through violence.

The death penalty tells people that murder is wrong unless it's carried out by the state.

Ultimately, as long as the criminal justice system is administered by humans it will be fallible. It's proven to be racist and there are over 170 cases of people being sentenced to death for crimes they didn't commit since 1973. According to the ACLU, it isn't even an effective crime deterrent.

Why should American citizens continue to empower such an unreliable system make the ultimate judgment on a person's life?

From Your Site Articles

Semon Frank Thompson filled a syringe with water, knowing — if this weren't just a job training — he'd be moments away from killing someone.

"I can remember this feeling," he explains of his time working in an Oregon prison. "Like, this just doesn’t make sense.”

At the time, Thompson believed in the death penalty. As a young black man growing up in the segregated South, he remembered the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was murdered at the hands of white supremacists for daring to flirt with a white woman.

Thompson, like many in his community, wanted justice for Till's killers. And capital punishment seemed like the only way to achieve it.

A photo of Emmett Till on the plaque that marks his grave in Illinois. Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images.

Years later — as the superintendent of the Oregon State Penitentiary, filling up that syringe during a training session on lethal injection — Thompson found himself in charge of death.

Administering death sentences was part of his job description.

As superintendent, Thompson was trained to carry out capital punishment at the facility. In his time there, he only carried out two death sentences, but it was enough to change his mind about the procedure forever.

For Thompson, abolishing the death penalty isn't just the moral thing to do — it will prevent further injustice from unfolding.

Most people on death row have done horrific things and committed unspeakable crimes. But to Thompson, who now travels across the country speaking out against the death penalty from his unique perspective, capital punishment fails to make our communities any safer. And evidence backs him up.

Research has yet to find any substantial data suggesting the death penalty deters crime, a 2014 report from The Washington Post noted. In fact, violent crime has generally fallen since 1990, even as more states have implemented bans and placed moratoriums on the death penalty.

On the other hand, the death penalty has certainly taken innocent lives. In the U.S., more than 150 people have been exonerated while on death row since 1976. In that time, a staggering 1,400 people have been executed. It makes you wonder: How many people of those 1,400 were innocent?

“There’s a surreal feeling about sitting down and looking at a human being and talking to them about what I plan to do to them," he said. "I realized that I — at my very, very core — felt that the death penalty was wrong.”

Watch Thompson's story about how his time working at the Oregon State Penitentiary inspired him to devote his life to saving others':

From Your Site Articles

12 photos of what death row inmates requested for their last meals.

If you had just one day left on Earth, what would your last meal be?

Henry Hargreaves photographed what death row prisoners in America requested as their last meal in his "No Seconds" series, saying that his main goal was "to have the viewer identify with the prisoner though their meal request. I wanted the viewer to think of them as a person for a moment instead of them being anonymous."

It's interesting that Henry's photography project doesn't make a judgment of the prisoner's crime, but rather humanizes the individual with a subtle glimpse of the prisoner's character and personality.

capital punishment

Virginia poised to become the first southern state to ban the death penalty

Brandon Bernard's senseless execution shows just how wrong the federal death penalty really is

He used to carry out the death penalty. This is why he totally changed his mind.

Semon Frank Thompson filled a syringe with water, knowing — if this weren't just a job training — he'd be moments away from killing someone.

For Thompson, abolishing the death penalty isn't just the moral thing to do — it will prevent further injustice from unfolding.

Watch Thompson's story about how his time working at the Oregon State Penitentiary inspired him to devote his life to saving others':

12 photos of what death row inmates requested for their last meals.

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