Commentary: Repealing Death Penalty ​‘Essential to Racial Healing’ in Virginia

Recent police and vig­i­lante killings of Black Americans have ignit­ed a nation­al call for sys­temic reform of law enforce­ment across the coun­try, high­light­ing the link between extra­ju­di­cial abuse of force and wide­spread dis­crim­i­na­to­ry appli­ca­tion of unnec­es­sar­i­ly harsh legal pun­ish­ments against peo­ple of col­or. In the wake of these mur­ders, Maryland pub­lic defend­er Kristina Leslie (pic­tured) writes, “[m]eaningful and equi­table crim­i­nal jus­tice reform … must include abol­ish­ing the death penalty.”

Leslie, who also serves as pres­i­dent of Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, authored an op-ed, Death penal­ty repeal is essen­tial to racial heal­ing, pub­lished July 2, 2020 in The Richmond Times-Dispatch. Her com­men­tary explains how Virginia’s death penal­ty fits into its his­to­ry of racial injus­tice and why the abo­li­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is a crit­i­cal ele­ment of the move­ment toward racial equi­ty. ​“For gen­er­a­tions,” she says, this country’s fail­ure to effec­tive­ly com­bat, or even con­front, sys­temic racism has result­ed in the bru­tal, dis­crim­i­na­to­ry treat­ment of Black and brown peo­ple. Nowhere is racial big­otry more insid­i­ous than in the appli­ca­tion of America’s harsh­est pun­ish­ment — death.” 

Leslie traces Virginia’s death penal­ty his­to­ry, link­ing it to lynch­ings and oth­er injus­tices and explain­ing how ​“racial bias inex­tri­ca­bly is tied to the death penal­ty.” Virginia, the site of the first exe­cu­tion in what is now the United States, has per­formed 1,390 doc­u­ment­ed exe­cu­tions since 1608. Of those, ​“only four involved a white defen­dant killing a Black vic­tim — all since 1997. This data sug­gests that Black lives are undervalued.”

A DPIC review of Virginia exe­cu­tion data from the 20^th cen­tu­ry demon­strates the his­tor­i­cal­ly dis­crim­i­na­to­ry appli­ca­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment against African Americans in Virginia. DPIC found that from 1900 to 1970, Virginia exe­cut­ed 73 peo­ple for rape, attempt­ed rape, or rob­bery not result­ing in death. Every one of those exe­cut­ed was African American.

Leslie’s op-ed spot­lights sev­er­al appalling instances of racism in the Commonwealth’s use of the death penal­ty. ​“One egre­gious case occurred in 1949,” she writes, ​“when sev­en young Black men were charged in Martinsville with the rape of a white woman. All sev­en men — sev­er­al false­ly threat­ened into con­fess­ing with nonex­is­tent lynch mobs — were con­vict­ed of rape, and aid­ing and abet­ting rape by white juries, then assem­bly-line elec­tro­cut­ed on two sep­a­rate days.” She notes that “[i]n stark con­trast, at the same time as the Martinsville cas­es, the Norfolk Journal report­ed that a white Virginia man named Murrel Dudley was con­vict­ed of rap­ing a ​‘fee­ble-mind­ed col­ored woman.’ He was fined $20.”

Leslie describes con­tin­u­ing racial dis­par­i­ties, includ­ing in the set­tings for cap­i­tal tri­als and the per­son­nel who car­ry them out. ​“Capital defen­dants in the com­mon­wealth are restrained by waist chains and leg irons while seat­ed in a court­room adorned with por­traits com­mem­o­rat­ing men of the Confederacy,” she writes. ​“Typically, the judge, pros­e­cu­tors and defense attor­neys all are white. As a Black lawyer, I am pro­found­ly aware that my client and I are the only minori­ties in the room.”

Despite its his­to­ry, Virginia is mov­ing away from the death penal­ty. It has not exe­cut­ed any­one since 2017, and no one has been sen­tenced to death in near­ly a decade. Governor Ralph Northam has said he would sign an abo­li­tion bill, and, ear­li­er in 2020, the Virginia leg­is­la­ture enact­ed a new law mak­ing pub­lic the iden­ti­ties of com­pa­nies that pro­vide exe­cu­tion drugs to the state.

“Meaningful and equi­table crim­i­nal jus­tice reform, born in the wake of the recent police mur­ders of Black Americans and sub­se­quent protests, must include abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty,” Leslie con­cludes. ​“Virginia has the oppor­tu­ni­ty to be the first Southern state to abol­ish cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment to cor­rect the wrongs of the past and advance toward a more just, equi­table and unbiased tomorrow.”