Two Virginia law­mak­ers who have had a fam­i­ly mem­ber mur­dered recent­ly spoke in oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty. During a sen­ate com­mit­tee hear­ing on a bill to impose a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions, Senators Henry L. Marsh III and Janet D. Howell not­ed that their oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty was based in their expe­ri­ence of los­ing a loved one to mur­der.

Howell’s father-in-law was mur­dered in his home eight years ago. She not­ed, ​“Up until then, I was in favor of the death penal­ty. But when my father-in-law was mur­dered, I dis­cov­ered that the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a death sen­tence on some­one did not uni­fy my fam­i­ly; it splin­tered my fam­i­ly. One of the rea­sons that I had always sup­port­ed the death penal­ty was sud­den­ly not there anymore.”

Marsh added that his broth­er was shot eight years ago. Though Marsh momen­tar­i­ly ques­tioned his oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty, he stat­ed that his broth­er’s mur­der and the events that fol­lowed made him even more con­vinced that there could be inno­cent peo­ple sen­tenced to death.

The leg­is­la­tion failed to pass out of com­mit­tee. (Washington Post, January 17, 2006). See Victims and New Voices.

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