During his tenure as Attorney General of Virginia from 1998 to 2001, that state exe­cut­ed 36 peo­ple. Now Mark Earley oppos­es the death penal­ty. The for­mer Attorney General recent­ly dis­cussed his change of opin­ion in an arti­cle for the University of Richmond Law Review. He wrote, ​“If you believe that the gov­ern­ment always ​‘gets it right,’ nev­er makes seri­ous mis­takes, and is nev­er taint­ed with cor­rup­tion, then you can be com­fort­able sup­port­ing the death penal­ty.” He said, ​“Overseeing a legal sys­tem that put so many to death with such effi­cien­cy erod­ed me,” but polit­i­cal con­cerns he had as Attorney General ​“walled off my doubts.” Since leav­ing office, Early said he has ​“come to the con­clu­sion that the death penal­ty is based on a false utopi­an premise. That false premise is that we have had, do have, and will have 100% accu­ra­cy in death penal­ty con­vic­tions and exe­cu­tions.” He high­lights two cas­es that raised sig­nif­i­cant con­cerns for him: the exon­er­a­tion of Earl Washington, which took place dur­ing Earley’s tenure as Attorney General, and the recent rul­ing vacat­ing the con­vic­tion of George Stinney, who was exe­cut­ed in South Carolina in 1944 at the age of 14. Earley con­cludes, ​“I can no longer sup­port the impo­si­tion of a penal­ty so final in nature, yet so fraught with failures.”

(M. Earley, ​“A PINK CADILLAC, AN IQ OF 63, AND A FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD FROM SOUTH CAROLINA: WHY I CAN NO LONGER SUPPORT THE DEATH PENALTY,” 49 University of Richmond Law Review 811, March, 2015; F. Green, ​“Mark Earley, for­mer Virginia attor­ney gen­er­al, now oppos­es death penal­ty,” Roanoke Times, April 8, 2015.) See New Voices and Innocence.

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