DPIC 2021 MID-YEAR REVIEW: Virginia’s Historic Death Penalty Abolition Accompanies Continuing Record-Low Death Penalty Usage in First Half of Year

The first half of 2021 spot­light­ed two con­tin­u­ing death-penal­ty trends in the United States, accord­ing to the Death Penalty Information Center’s 2021 Mid-Year Review. On one hand, the con­tin­u­ing ero­sion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in law and prac­tice across the coun­try; on the oth­er hand, the extreme and often law­less con­duct of the few juris­dic­tions that have attempt­ed to car­ry out exe­cu­tions this year. The year began with three exe­cu­tions that con­clud­ed the Trump administration’s unpar­al­leled spree of 13 fed­er­al civil­ian exe­cu­tions in six months and two days, and saw state attempts to revive grue­some, dis­used exe­cu­tion meth­ods and to intro­duce nev­er-before-tried ways of putting pris­on­ers to death. At the same time, the first half of 2021 fea­tured the his­toric abo­li­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the for­mer home of the Confederacy and his­tor­i­cal­ly low num­bers of both exe­cu­tions and new death sentences. 

Virginia’s abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty was sig­nif­i­cant both his­tor­i­cal­ly and sym­bol­i­cal­ly. When Gov. Ralph Northam signed the repeal bill (pic­tured), it was the first time a Deep South state whose death penal­ty was close­ly tied to a his­to­ry of slav­ery, lynch­ing, and Jim Crow seg­re­ga­tion had aban­doned the pun­ish­ment. Virginia was the 23^rd state to abol­ish the death penal­ty and, with for­mal mora­to­ria on exe­cu­tions in place in three states, meant that a major­i­ty of states either did not autho­rize the death penal­ty or had a for­mal pol­i­cy against car­ry­ing it out. 

Five peo­ple were exe­cut­ed in the first half of the year — three by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment and two by the state of Texas. Only four new death sen­tences were imposed — one each in Alabama, California, Florida, and Nebraska — in a rate of sen­tenc­ing unmatched since the death penal­ty resumed in the U.S. in the 1970s. The low num­bers were once again unques­tion­ably affect­ed by the pan­dem­ic, but sig­naled that 2021 will be the sev­enth con­sec­u­tive year of few­er that 30 exe­cu­tions and few­er than 50 new death sen­tences in the U.S.

The states of Arizona and South Carolina moved for­ward with plans to car­ry out exe­cu­tions using exe­cu­tion meth­ods that have been aban­doned in most of the coun­try due to their bru­tal­i­ty. Arizona announced that it had ​“refur­bished” its gas cham­ber to exe­cute pris­on­ers with cyanide gas, the same sub­stance used by the Nazis to mur­der more than a mil­lion peo­ple dur­ing the Holocaust. One day before the tenth anniver­sary of the state’s last exe­cu­tion, the South Carolina leg­is­la­ture passed a law allow­ing the state to per­form exe­cu­tions using the elec­tric chair or fir­ing squad. Alabama announced that it was near­ly ready to per­form exe­cu­tions using nitro­gen hypox­ia, a new, untried method in which the pris­on­er dies of asphyx­i­a­tion from breath­ing pure nitrogen.

The exe­cut­ing states also dis­played remark­able incom­pe­tence, with South Carolina set­ting four exe­cu­tion dates it was inca­pable of law­ful­ly car­ry­ing out; Arizona test­ing the air-tight­ness of its exe­cu­tion cham­ber by pass­ing a can­dle flame across its seals; Nevada obtain­ing drugs online in prob­a­ble vio­la­tion of state and fed­er­al law and despite advance notice that the drugs could not be used for exe­cu­tions; and Texas for­get­ting to bring assem­bled reporters into the prison to wit­ness an execution.