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May 16, 2023
New Revelations Regarding the Virginia Execution Tapes Now Largely Removed from Public Viewing
Over a decade ago, four audio tapes and hundreds of execution documents were donated to the Library of the University of Virginia by a former Virginia correctional employee. National Public Radio (NPR) aired excerpts from those long-hidden tapes in January 2023. Shortly thereafter, a representative from the Virginia Department of Corrections (VDOC) then requested the return of all the materials. NPR now reports that only two of the six boxes of material remain available for viewing at the prison, by way of a public records request. The entirety of the…
Read MoreMar 08, 2023
BOOKS: “Crossing the River Styx: The Memoir of a Death Row Chaplain”
In Crossing the River Styx: The Memoir of a Death Row Chaplain, (March 2023), author Russ Ford recounts the abuses he witnessed as the head chaplain of Virginia’s death row and the strong relationships he formed with more than a dozen condemned prisoners. Through stories, he describes the core of human dignity he experienced among death row prisoners, as well as the treacherous conditions these individuals faced during their final days.
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Nov 07, 2022
Closing the Slaughterhouse: The Inside Story of Death Penalty Abolition in Virginia
Virginia made history in 2021 when it became the first Southern state to abolish the death penalty. Closing the Slaughterhouse: The Inside Story of Death Penalty Abolition in Virginia tells the story of the commonwealth’s journey from leading executioner to groundbreaking abolitionist state. Written by journalist, author, and anti-death penalty advocate Dale Brumfield, the book explores Virginia’s history surrounding capital punishment, starting with the first execution in 1608 through its abolition on July 1, 2021.
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Feb 24, 2022
Despite Ineffectiveness as Public-Safety Tool, Anti-Abolition Lawmakers Push Bills to Reinstate Death Penalty for Killings of Police Officers
Despite the absence of evidence that the death penalty protects police or promotes public safety, lawmakers in several states that have abolished capital punishment have introduced bills to reinstate capital punishment for the murders of police officers.
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Oct 04, 2021
New Scholarship: A Review of Virginia’s Death-Penalty Experience Exposes the Myth that the Death Penalty is Reserved for ‘the Worst of the Worst’ Cases
The death penalty is reserved for “’the worst of the worst’ — or at least that is what we are told,” writes University of Richmond law professor Corrina Barrett Lain (pictured) in a Washington & Lee Law Review post-mortem on Virginia’s use of capital punishment. Although the “worst of the worst” is a core command of a constitutionally compliant death penalty, “the death penalty doesn’t just exist in the abstract,” Lain notes. And when she takes the opportunity “to set the record straight about who we execute generally, and what…
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Sep 03, 2021
‘Martinsville 7’ Granted Posthumous Pardons 70 Years After Their Executions
Virginia Governor Ralph Northam has posthumously pardoned seven young Black men who were sentenced to death by all-white juries and executed in Virginia seven decades ago on charges of raping a white woman. Following years of advocacy from family members and other advocates who pushed for gubernatorial action, Northam announced the posthumous pardons on August 31, 2021, surprising the family members and advocates who had come to the capitol expecting to personally meet with the governor to plead their case.
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Jul 15, 2021
Hidden Costs: Liability Judgments for Wrongful Capital Prosecutions Cost Taxpayers in Death-Penalty States Hundreds of Millions of Dollars
Studies have consistently found that a system of criminal law in which the death penalty is available as a punishment is far more expensive than a system in which the most severe punishment is life without parole or a long prison term. Now, as the number of murder exonerations mounts across the United States, a previously hidden cost is emerging: the cost of liability for police and prosecutorial misconduct associated with the wrongful use or threatened use of the death penalty.
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Apr 30, 2021
Martin Luther King III: Virginia’s Death Penalty Repeal Shows ‘What is Possible When We Confront This Country’s Racist Past’
The history of racial oppression and lynching in the U.S. South has, civil rights advocate Martin Luther King III writes, “too frequently … gone untold and unaddressed.” But, he says in an April 17, 2021 op-ed in USA Today, Virginia’s repeal of the death penalty “shows us what is possible when we confront this country’s racist past, and acknowledge how racism permeates this country’s practices and laws.”
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Mar 30, 2021
How Capital Defenders Helped End Virginia’s Death Penalty
Virginia’s capital defenders have “worked themselves out of a job,” according to David Johnson, executive director of the Virginia Indigent Defense Commission. The commonwealth’s four capital defense offices, which opened in 2002, are credited with bringing about a dramatic decline in death sentences. That decline was a major factor in Virginia becoming the first southern state to abolish the death penalty.
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Mar 24, 2021
Virginia Becomes 23rd State and the First in the South to Abolish the Death Penalty
Saying “[t]here is no place today for the death penalty in this commonwealth, in the South, or in this nation,” Governor Ralph Northam (pictured) signed historic legislation making Virginia the 23rd U.S. state and the first in the South to abolish capital punishment.
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Mar 15, 2021
Commentary: Death-Penalty Reform Requires Action at the State Level
In the United States, the responsibility for defining what is a crime and enforcing the criminal laws rests primarily with the states. That fact, New York Times columnist Charles Blow (pictured) writes, makes action at the state level “[t]he true frontier of criminal justice equality.” From cash bail to the death penalty, Blow says, “[i]f the criminal justice system is to move toward racial equality and liberation this change will have to start with the states.”
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History of the Death Penalty
Executions in Virginia were carried out by hanging for 300 years, until the first electrocution in 1908. The last execution by hanging occurred on April 9, 1909.
In the modern era of capital punishment, Virginia has executed a higher percentage of its death-row prisoners than any other state. That high percentage was the combined product of poor defense representation and the most draconian procedural rules in the country, under which defendants were denied any judicial review of legal claims that their lawyers failed to raise at the right time or in the right manner, even when through no fault of the defendant a lawyer missed a filing deadline. After the state began instructing juries in the late 1990s that defendants sentenced to life imprisonment would never be eligible for parole, and then created regional capital defender offices in 2002-2003 to represent most capital defendants at trial, death sentences in the state significantly declined. No death sentences have been imposed by Virginia juries since 2011.
On February 3, 2021, the Virginia state senate voted to abolish the commonwealth’s death penalty. The state House of Delegates followed suit on February 5. The General Assembly must reconcile language differences between the two proposals before a repeal bill can be sent to the Governor for his signature. Gov. Ralph Northam has indicated that he will sign the repeal bill. If that happens, Virginia will become the first state of the former Confederacy to abolish the death penalty.
Famous Cases
“DC sniper”: John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo were both tried in Virginia for a series of shootings in October 2002. Although the crimes occurred in Maryland and Washington, DC, as well as Virginia, the first trials were held in Virginia, in part, because Virginia allowed the execution of juveniles. Malvo was 17 at the time of the crimes. Muhammad was executed on November 10, 2009. Malvo is serving a sentence of life in prison without parole.
Daryl Atkins was sentenced to death for the abduction and murder of Eric Nesbitt. Atkins appealed his sentence, claiming that his intellectual disability made him ineligible for execution. Atkins’ appeal was heard by the Supreme Court in Atkins v. Virginia (2002), and the Court held that the execution of “mentally retarded” defendants is unconstitutional. At a subsequent hearing to determine whether Atkins was eligible for the death penalty, the jury credited controversial prosecution evidence and rejected Atkins’ claim of intellectual disability. However, after it was disclosed that evidence had been improperly withheld from the defense in the case, the prosecution agreed to withdraw the death penalty and Atkins was resentenced to life without parole.
Notable Exonerations
Earl Washington was pardoned in 2000 after DNA evidence excluded him as a perpetrator in the rape and murder for which he had been sentenced to death. Washington is intellectually disabled, and had been coerced into confessing to the crime.
Milestones in Abolition
Virginia is the first Southern state to abolish capital punishment. On March 24, 2021, Governor Ralph Northam signed legislation to end the death penalty in Virginia and reduce the sentences of the commonwealth’s two death-row prisoners to life without parole. On February 3, the Virginia Senate had voted along party lines, 21-17, in favor of abolishing capital punishment. Two days later, three Republicans joined all but one Democrat in the Virginia House of Delegates in a 57-41 vote to repeal the death penalty.
Virginia “Firsts”
The first execution in what is now the United States took place in Virginia. Captain George Kendall was executed in the Jamestown colony in 1608 for spying for Spain.
Other Interesting Facts
Virginia has executed more people in its history than any other state.
On February 2, 1951, 5 inmates were executed, the largest number of executions carried out on a single day in Virginia. The executions were part of the case of the “Martinsville 7,” seven African American men charged with having raped a white woman. Historians believe that least five of the men were innocent. After giving coerced confessions, the men were convicted and sentenced to death by all-white male juries in perfunctory trials that lasted less than one day each. The other members of the Martinsville 7 were executed on February 5, 1951.
The Martinsville 7 case illustrates Virginia’s historically discriminatory use of the death penalty. From 1900 until the U.S. Supreme Court declared the death penalty unconstitutional in 1977 for crimes in which no one was killed, Virginia executed 73 Black defendants for rape, attempted, or armed robbery that did not result in death, while no White defendants were executed for those crimes.
Virginia Executions in the 20th Century (by Race)
Decade |
Total Executions |
Murder |
Rape |
Attempted Rape |
Armed Robbery |
||||||||||
W |
B |
All |
W |
B |
All |
W |
B |
All |
W |
B |
All |
W |
B |
All |
|
1900-1909 |
14 |
73 |
87 |
14 |
55* |
69 |
0 |
9 |
9 |
0 |
9 |
9 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
1910-1919 |
11 |
69 |
80 |
11 |
47 |
58 |
0 |
12 |
12 |
0 |
6* |
6 |
0 |
4* |
4 |
1920-1929 |
4 |
41 |
45 |
4 |
31 |
35 |
0 |
6 |
6 |
0 |
4 |
4 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
1930-1939 |
5 |
23 |
28 |
5 |
19 |
24 |
0 |
3 |
3 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
1 |
1 |
1940-1949 |
7 |
28 |
35 |
7 |
19 |
26 |
0 |
8* |
8 |
0 |
1 |
1 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
1950-1959 |
3 |
20 |
23 |
3 |
11 |
14 |
0 |
9 |
9 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
1960-1969 |
2 |
4 |
6 |
2 |
3 |
5 |
0 |
1 |
1 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
1970-1979 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
1980-1989 |
2 |
6 |
8 |
2 |
6 |
8 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
1990-1999 |
31 |
32 |
65* |
31 |
32 |
65* |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
TOTAL |
79 |
296 |
377 |
79 |
223 |
304 |
0 |
48 |
48 |
0 |
20 |
20 |
0 |
5 |
5 |
*In the decade of the 1900s, one man listed under murder was executed as an accessory to murder. In the 1910s, one man listed under attempted rape was executed for highway robbery and attempted rape and one listed under armed robbery was executed for highway robbery. In the 1940s, one man listed under rape was executed for rape and robbery. In the 1990s, two Latino men were executed for murder.
Sources: For executions between 1900 and 1907 and executions by hanging in 1908 and 1909— Executions in the U.S. 1608-2002: The ESPY File, Executions by State. For other executions between 1908 and 1972 — Bureau of Records, Virginia State Penitentiary, Electrocutions Performed at Virginia State Penitentiary (undated), in Capital Punishment in Virginia, 58 Va. L. Rev. 97, 142 (1972). For executions between 1972 and 1999 — Death Penalty Information Center, Execution Database.
Great Falls National Park. Photo by Kenneth England.
