Virginia Death Penalty Repeal Bill Gains Final Legislative Approval, Moves to Governor’s Desk

Death-penal­ty repeal leg­is­la­tion in Virginia will move to Governor Ralph Northam’s desk, after both hous­es approved the bill passed ear­li­er in the ses­sion in the oppo­site cham­ber. Virginia’s leg­isla­tive rules required the House of Delegates to pass the Senate bill or vice ver­sa, even though the bill text was iden­ti­cal. Governor Northam has pledged to sign the bill, which will make Virginia the 23^rd state, and the first in the South, to abol­ish capital punishment.

The Virginia Senate passed HB 2263, the House ver­sion of the bill, by a 22 – 16 vote on February 22, 2021. Senator Jill Holtzman Vogel, who had ini­tial­ly vot­ed for a pri­or ver­sion of the bill in com­mit­tee, then against the Senate bill after it was amend­ed, again changed her vote, becom­ing the only Republican sen­a­tor to vote in favor of repeal. The House of Delegates passed SB 1165 on the same day, by a vote of 57 – 43, main­tain­ing the same bipar­ti­san sup­port for repeal as in the initial vote. 

The vote to repeal the death penal­ty was an his­toric change in a state that was the set­ting for more exe­cu­tions than any oth­er state and that had car­ried out the sec­ond most exe­cu­tions since the resump­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the 1970s. ​“It was sort of part of the fab­ric of Virginia,” said for­mer Virginia Attorney General Stephen D. Rosenthal.

In a joint state­ment, Governor Northam, Senate Majority Leader Dick Saslaw (D – Fairfax) and House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn (D – Fairfax) applaud­ed the repeal effort, call­ing it ​“an impor­tant step for­ward in ensur­ing that our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem is fair and equi­table to all.” ​“Over Virginia’s long his­to­ry, this Commonwealth has exe­cut­ed more peo­ple than any oth­er state. And, like many oth­er states, Virginia has come too close to exe­cut­ing an inno­cent per­son,” the state­ment said. ​“It’s time we stop this machin­ery of death.”

Delegate Mike Mullin (D – Newport News) urged his col­leagues to vote for final pas­sage the repeal bill, which he spon­sored. ​“There is no sep­a­rat­ing the death penal­ty in Virginia from racism,” he said dur­ing the floor debate. ​“They are inex­tri­ca­bly linked. It’s a ran­dom, arbi­trary and racist process. In fact, it wasn’t even until 1997 that Virginia even exe­cut­ed a white per­son for killing a Black [per­son], and even that’s only hap­pened four times.” 

The debate became emo­tion­al at times. House Minority Leader Todd Gilbert (R – Shenandoah) accused Democrats of not express­ing ​“even a lit­tle con­cern” for crime vic­tims. Delegate Chris Hurst (D – Montgomery), who said he had not planned to speak, replied to Gilbert’s accu­sa­tions by recount­ing his own anger when his girl­friend, a tele­vi­sion jour­nal­ist, was fatal­ly shot on live tele­vi­sion five years ago. He said he was tired of the ​“pan­der­ing” and ​“hand-wring­ing.” ​“We are not a nation of emo­tions,” he said. ​“We do not need to be a soci­ety that deter­mines that there should be an eye for an eye.” 

Virginia has car­ried out 1390 exe­cu­tions since 1608. In the mod­ern era, it is sec­ond to Texas, with 113 exe­cu­tions since 1976. The last exe­cu­tion in Virginia took place in 2017, and two men are cur­rent­ly on death row. The bill would resen­tence them to life with­out pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole. No one has been sen­tenced to death in Virginia since 2011.