Closing the Slaughterhouse: The Inside Story of Death Penalty Abolition in Virginia

Virginia made his­to­ry in 2021 when it became the first Southern state to abol­ish the death penal­ty. Closing the Slaughterhouse: The Inside Story of Death Penalty Abolition in Virginia tells the sto­ry of the commonwealth’s jour­ney from lead­ing exe­cu­tion­er to ground­break­ing abo­li­tion­ist state. Written by jour­nal­ist, author, and anti-death penal­ty advo­cate Dale Brumfield, the book explores Virginia’s his­to­ry sur­round­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, start­ing with the first exe­cu­tion in 1608 through its abo­li­tion on July 1, 2021. 

Characteristic of states whose crim­i­nal laws grew out of a lega­cy of slav­ery, lynch­ing, and Jim Crow seg­re­ga­tion, the cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem in Virginia was deeply root­ed in racism and shroud­ed by a veil of secre­cy. Leading the nation with 1,390 exe­cu­tions through­out its his­to­ry, Virginia also exe­cut­ed more enslaved indi­vid­u­als and women than any oth­er state. The state con­tin­ued heav­i­ly using the death penal­ty in the mod­ern era, begin­ning in 1976, even adopt­ing dra­con­ian pro­ce­dur­al rules to short-cir­cuit judi­cial review and facil­i­tate swifter exe­cu­tions. In con­trast to the nation­wide aver­age of 16% of death sen­tences result­ing in exe­cu­tion, Virginia exe­cut­ed 73% of those receiv­ing death sen­tences from 1976 to 2017. The commonwealth’s cur­tail­ment of the death row appeals process in 1999 reduced the time­frame for appeals to less than 5 years, half the nation­al aver­age at the time. 

In 1991, a Virginia Tech Center for Survey Research poll report­ed that 80 per­cent of Virginians said they sup­port­ed the death penal­ty; how­ev­er, sup­port fell to 60% when par­tic­i­pants had life with­out parole as an alter­na­tive option. ​“When com­bined with some form of resti­tu­tion to mur­der vic­tims’ fam­i­lies,” sup­port was less than 57%. A group of 13 anti-death penal­ty orga­niz­ers iden­ti­fied the impor­tance of this poll, and Henry Heller, the first vol­un­teer direc­tor of what came to be known as Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (VADP), said ​“let’s do some­thing with it.”

Brumfield cat­a­logues VADP’s 20-year effort to abol­ish the death penal­ty. The orga­ni­za­tion, he writes, offered pen-pal pro­grams, sent out newslet­ters, and pro­vid­ed sup­port ser­vices for those on death row and their fam­i­lies through the Death Row Support Project. Successful VADP lob­by­ing efforts defeat­ed the ​“Triggerman” bill, Brumfield writes, pre­vent­ing the expan­sion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment to any­one who assist­ed in cap­i­tal mur­der, inten­tion­al­ly or not. 

Despite their ​“sig­nif­i­cant 2010 trig­ger­man vic­to­ry” and amidst a num­ber of expan­sion bills in the General Assembly, VADP lost a sig­ni­fi­ca­tion amount of fund­ing in 2010 from foun­da­tions that were ​“instead invest­ing in states where abo­li­tion looked more promising.” 

In 2015, the orga­ni­za­tion adopt­ed a 5‑year plan for abo­li­tion, a core piece of this plan includ­ed gar­ner­ing sup­port from con­ser­v­a­tives. Steve Northrup, the vol­un­teer exec­u­tive direc­tor, recalled includ­ing ​“Reasons that would appeal to con­ser­v­a­tives, such as you don’t trust big gov­ern­ment, why would you trust the gov­ern­ment to get [death] right?” 

Joining VADP as Executive Director in 2015, Michael Stone likened orga­niz­ing the abo­li­tion move­ment in 2021 to being the ​“con­duc­tor of a sym­pho­ny. The key is under­stand­ing how the sym­pho­ny works togeth­er and then bring­ing in the key pieces, the pros­e­cu­tors the victim’s fam­i­ly mem­bers, the con­ser­v­a­tives, the media, grass­roots activists, and our allies at the appro­pri­ate time. Just orches­trat­ing that was cer­tain­ly very satisfying.”

In the wake of George Floyd’s death and the rise of the Black Lives Matter move­ment, VADP issued a state­ment authored by Stone and board chair Kristina Leslie stat­ing that ​“Sadly, once again, with the hor­rif­ic mur­der of George Floyd, we are remind­ed of these out­rages…. The death penal­ty is a poster child for every­thing wrong with our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem — bla­tant racial dis­par­i­ties, police and pros­e­cu­tor mis­con­duct, and the propen­si­ty for con­vict­ing inno­cent men and women.” 

The book describes Governor Ralph Northam sign­ing death penal­ty abo­li­tion into law on March 24, 2021, ​“inside a tent in the shad­ow of the state’s exe­cu­tion cham­ber at Greensville Correctional Center.” Governor Northam explained, “’Ending the death penal­ty comes down to one fun­da­men­tal ques­tion: Is it fair?… But we all know that the death penal­ty can­not meet those cri­te­ria. That is why it is time in the Commonwealth of Virginia to end the death penalty.’”