Family Members of Murder Victims Say Virginia’s Death Penalty ​‘Fails Victims’ Families,’ Urge Legislature to Abolish It

Saying that ​“Virginia’s death penal­ty fails vic­tims’ fam­i­lies,” 13 fam­i­ly mem­bers of Virginia homi­cide vic­tims — includ­ing the daugh­ter of a sheriff’s deputy whose assailant was exe­cut­ed — have called on Virginia leg­is­la­tors to abol­ish capital punishment. 

The let­ter, released by the advo­ca­cy orga­ni­za­tion Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty on November 21, 2019, calls Virginia’s death penal­ty sys­tem ​“inef­fi­cient and inef­fec­tive.” ​“Our direct expe­ri­ences with the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem and strug­gling with grief have led us all to the same con­clu­sion: Virginia’s death penal­ty fails vic­tims’ fam­i­lies,” the letter states. 

The fam­i­ly mem­bers argue crim­i­nal jus­tice fund­ing that is cur­rent­ly pay­ing for ​“expen­sive cap­i­tal mur­der tri­als could be bet­ter spent on much need­ed and cur­rent­ly under­fund­ed sup­port pro­grams that help vic­tims’ fam­i­lies with funer­al costs, coun­sel­ing, and oth­er ser­vices.” Those tri­als and the result­ing death-penal­ty appeals, they write, take much longer to resolve than a non-cap­i­tal tri­al or a plea bar­gain, turn­ing the defen­dant ​“into a celebri­ty while the victim’s fam­i­ly is trau­ma­tized again and again.”

The let­ter con­cludes, “[w]e call on the Virginia General Assembly to abol­ish the death penal­ty and replace it with life in prison with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole.” 

One of the letter’s sign­ers is Rachel Sutphin (pic­tured), the daugh­ter of Corporal Eric Sutphin, who was mur­dered by William Morva in 2006. At a November 21, 2019 press con­fer­ence and in a November 22 op-ed in the Washington Post, she detailed her per­son­al expe­ri­ence with Virginia’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment process. Sutphin sought clemen­cy for her father’s killer pri­or to Morva’s exe­cu­tion in 2017 based upon con­cerns about Morva’s men­tal ill­ness. As Morva’s exe­cu­tion date approached, she wrote to then-Governor Terry McAuliffe ask­ing that his death sen­tence be com­mut­ed, but she did not receive any response. 

In the op-ed, Sutphin wrote, ​“Instead of sup­port­ing my fam­i­ly and me when we need­ed it the most, the com­mon­wealth devot­ed its resources to the tri­al and appeals that last­ed more than 10 years. Year after year, I was retrau­ma­tized by the uncer­tain­ty and was repeat­ed­ly forced to relive the worst day of my life…. Morva’s exe­cu­tion brought no solace to me, but it strength­ened my resolve that the death penal­ty needs to be abolished.” 

“With the abo­li­tion of the penal­ty, fam­i­lies like mine will no longer suf­fer through the long process of manda­to­ry death sen­tence appeals,” Sutphin said. 

Morva’s exe­cu­tion on July 6, 2017 was the last one car­ried out by Virginia. The com­mon­wealth has not imposed a new death sen­tence since 2011 and only has two peo­ple fac­ing active death sen­tences. Both of those pris­on­ers, Anthony Juniper and Thomas Porter, have had their cas­es remand­ed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit to con­sid­er errors that could result in their sen­tences or con­vic­tions being over­turned. According to Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, near­ly two-thirds of Virginia’s juris­dic­tions have not had an exe­cu­tion in at least 50 years.