Virginia Legislature Votes to Abolish the Death Penalty

With two his­toric votes, the Virginia General Assembly has moved the com­mon­wealth to the cusp of becom­ing the first Southern state to abol­ish cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, approv­ing sep­a­rate bills that would end the state’s death penal­ty and resen­tence the two men on death row to life with­out parole. On February 3, 2021, the Virginia State Senate 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 and replace it with a sen­tence of life without parole.

Because of slight dif­fer­ences between the lan­guage of the two bills, one of the hous­es of the General Assembly must still approve the lan­guage of a bill passed by the oth­er cham­ber before the mea­sure can be trans­mit­ted to Governor Ralph Northam for his sig­na­ture. Northam, who became the first Virginia gov­er­nor to spon­sor leg­is­la­tion to abol­ish the death penal­ty, issued a state­ment after the Senate vote call­ing the sen­a­tors’ action ​“a tremen­dous step toward end­ing the death penal­ty in our Commonwealth.” ​“It’s time for Virginia to join 22 oth­er states and abol­ish the death penal­ty. I applaud every Senator who cast a coura­geous vote today, and I look for­ward to sign­ing this bill into law,” Northam said.

In a state­ment fol­low­ing the House vote, Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn said ​“Today, our Commonwealth took a his­toric step in mak­ing our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem more just. The repeal of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in Virginia takes our Commonwealth out of the busi­ness of deter­min­ing life and death and ends a prac­tice that a major­i­ty of Virginia oppose.” In an inter­view with The Washington Post, she called the vote ​“his­toric” and ​“trans­for­ma­tion­al.” ​“Virginia is chang­ing, and … it’s what the public wants.”

As the leg­is­la­ture was prepar­ing to debate the death penal­ty bills, the Wason Center for Civic Leadership at Christopher Newport University released a poll show­ing that a major­i­ty of Virginians (56%) sup­port­ed repeal­ing the death penal­ty. Support was strongest among Democrats (74%), Black vot­ers (72%), and peo­ple under 45 (62%). More than one-third of Republican respon­dents (36%) also said they sup­port­ed the measure.

Despite bipar­ti­san pop­u­lar sup­port for end­ing the death penal­ty, no Senate Republicans vot­ed for the repeal bill. In a dra­mat­ic turn dur­ing the floor debate on the mea­sure, two Republican law­mak­ers who had vot­ed to advance the bill out of com­mit­tee with­drew their support.

Sen. William Stanley, who had ini­tial­ly signed on as a co-patron of the bill, abstained from vot­ing after express­ing frus­tra­tion that his col­leagues had vot­ed down an amend­ment that would have guar­an­teed that defen­dants con­vict­ed of aggra­vat­ed mur­der would nev­er be released on parole. Sen. Jill Vogel, who also had sup­port­ed the bill in com­mit­tee, vot­ed against the bill say­ing it left open the pos­si­bil­i­ty that pris­on­ers con­vict­ed of aggra­vat­ed mur­der could even­tu­al­ly be released. The Washington Post report­ed that the dis­pute had cost the bill three Republican votes and the man­tle of bipartisanship.

The debate on the bill high­light­ed sys­temic prob­lems endem­ic to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, includ­ing the risk of exe­cut­ing inno­cent peo­ple, the cost of death-penal­ty cas­es, and per­sis­tent racial bias in its appli­ca­tion. ​“I can­not think of any­thing that is more awful, unspeak­able and wrong for a gov­ern­ment to do than to use its pow­er to exe­cute some­body who didn’t com­mit the crime they’re accused of,” Democratic Sen. Scott Surovell, the bill’s spon­sor, said. ​“The prob­lem with cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is that once it’s inflict­ed you can’t take it back, it can’t be corrected.”

Sen. Jennifer McClellan shared the sto­ry of Jerry Givens, who car­ried out 62 exe­cu­tions in Virginia before becom­ing an anti-death penal­ty activist and speak­ing out about the toll exe­cu­tions take on cor­rec­tions offi­cers. Several sen­a­tors said they opposed repeal because they believe the death penal­ty offers jus­tice for fam­i­lies of mur­der vic­tims. In response, Sen. Janet Howell gave an emo­tion­al descrip­tion of how the mur­der of her father-in-law caused her to ques­tion her for­mer sup­port of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The prospect of the death penal­ty divid­ed her fam­i­ly, she said. ​“I don’t buy the idea that we would sup­port the death penal­ty for the ben­e­fit of vic­tims’ fam­i­lies. It doesn’t work that way. Trust me, it doesn’t work that way.”

The vote in the House of Delegates also reflect­ed philo­soph­i­cal dif­fer­ences between the par­ties, although three Republicans in the cham­ber vot­ed in favor of the repeal.

Virginia’s move toward abo­li­tion is seen as a land­mark event because of the state’s his­to­ry and its once-heavy use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. No for­mer Confederate state has abol­ished the death penal­ty. The first exe­cu­tion per­formed by Europeans in what is now the United States took place in Virginia’s Jamestown colony in 1608. In its 400-year his­to­ry, the com­mon­wealth has exe­cut­ed more peo­ple than any oth­er state, and in the mod­ern era of the death penal­ty, since exe­cu­tions resumed in the U.S. in the 1970s, it is sec­ond only to Texas.