Colorado, Virginia State Senates Move to Abolish, Reform Death Penalty

In leg­isla­tive votes 1,600 miles apart on January 30, 2020, state sen­ates in Colorado and Virginia took his­toric steps toward abol­ish­ing or reform­ing their state death-penalty systems. 

After hours of emo­tion­al debate on the floor of the state sen­ate in Denver, Colorado sen­a­tors vot­ed 19 – 15 to repeal the state’s death-penal­ty statute. Hours ear­li­er, in Richmond, the Virginia state sen­ate passed a bill that would bar the death penal­ty for indi­vid­u­als who were suf­fer­ing from severe men­tal ill­ness at the time of the crime. The men­tal ill­ness bill passed with strong bipar­ti­san sup­port by a vote of 32 – 7.

The Colorado vote on the senate’s ​“sec­ond con­sid­er­a­tion” of the bill was con­sid­ered the most crit­i­cal pro­ce­dur­al step in leg­isla­tive efforts to repeal the death penal­ty. The bill, which would abol­ish cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment for all cas­es brought to tri­al on or after July 1, 2020, still requires for­mal pas­sage on third con­sid­er­a­tion January 31 before it can advance to the state House of Representatives. However, news­pa­per reports and the bill’s sup­port­ers say that step is large­ly a formality. 

A pre­vi­ous abo­li­tion bill was with­drawn with­out a vote by the full Colorado sen­ate dur­ing the 2019 leg­isla­tive ses­sion after hav­ing been report­ed out of com­mit­tee. Abolition pro­po­nents say they have suf­fi­cient votes for pas­sage in the state House of Representatives and Governor Jared Polis has indi­cat­ed he will sign the bill into law if it pass­es. If the repeal effort suc­ceeds, Colorado would become the 22^nd state to abol­ish the death penal­ty, and the tenth to do so in the past fifteen years.

The Virginia vote marked the sec­ond time the sen­ate had passed what would be a first-in-the-nation leg­isla­tive pro­hi­bi­tion on the use of the death penal­ty against per­sons with severe men­tal ill­ness. On January 27, 2019, the sen­ate passed sim­i­lar leg­is­la­tion by a 23 – 17 vote but that bill died with­out a vote in a House crim­i­nal jus­tice sub­com­mit­tee. This year, a major­i­ty of Republican sen­a­tors (11 of 19), includ­ing five who had opposed the bill in 2019, joined all 21 sen­ate Democrats in sup­port­ing the proposal. 

After Democrats gained con­trol of the Virginia House of Delegates in the November 2019 leg­isla­tive elec­tions, news reports say that sub­com­mit­tee ​“has been dra­mat­i­cal­ly recon­fig­ured,” rais­ing the prospects that the del­e­gates will approve the men­tal ill­ness exemp­tion this ses­sion. The bill defines severe men­tal ill­ness as ​“active psy­chot­ic symp­toms that sub­stan­tial­ly impair a per­son­’s capac­i­ty to (i) appre­ci­ate the nature, con­se­quences, or wrong­ful­ness of the per­son­’s con­duct; (ii) exer­cise ratio­nal judg­ment in rela­tion to the per­son­’s con­duct; or (iii) con­form the per­son­’s con­duct to the require­ments of the law.”

Governor Ralph Northam, who is also a med­ical doc­tor, says he sup­ports the exemption.