Facts & Ideas for Sen. Tim Kaine’s Op-Ed on Virginia Ending
the DP
“ Virginia has executed 1,390 people since 1608, more than any other state.
“ Virginia has executed 113 people in the modern era (since 1976), second
only to Texas.
“ Virginia’s DP expanded against Blacks during Jim Crow, continuing its racist
legacy into the twenty-first century. From 1800 to 1900, Virginia executed
538 Blacks and only 45 whites.
“In 1848 Virginia made any crime for which a white person could be
sentenced to three years or more in prison, including rape and highway
robbery, a capital crime for Blacks and punishable by death.
“ An 1894 law expanded these laws by making the attempted rape of a white
woman by a Black also punishable by death, for fears among the legislators
that failure to do so would encourage white mob violence.
“+ During this time a Black person could not bear witness against a white
defendant, so crimes such as the rape of a Black woman by a white man
were rarely prosecuted, and never resulted in a death sentence. Conversely,
a Black defendant could not confront his or her white accuser.
“ With the introduction of centralized electric chair executions in 1908, capital
punishment replaced lynching, and ushered in some of the deadliest years
in Virginia history, with 87 Blacks and only 13 whites electrocuted between
1908 and 1920.
“An editorial in the October 14, 1908, Richmond Times-Dispatch
inadvertently compared the use of the electric chair to lynching, in that the
secrecy surrounding the chair was “... well calculated to inspire terror in the
heart of the superstitious African.”
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“
The September 2020 Death Penalty Information Center report “Enduring
Justice” affirmed that since 1982, a Virginia defendant was three times more
likely to be sentenced to death if the victim was white than if the victim was
Black. <https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/facts-and-research/dpic-reports/in-
depth/enduring-injustice-the-persistence-of-racial-discrimination-in-the-u-s-
death-penalty>
“ No white Virginian was ever executed for a crime against a Black until 1997.
*» 174 people once sentenced to death in the US were later found innocent
and exonerated.
- Many others were executed despite doubts about their guilt.
* 18 people convicted of murder in Virginia have been exonerated since 1989.
- One of those exonerated was Earl Washington who had been sentenced
to death.
* Virginia becomes the 23rd state to abolish the death penalty, the first in the
South.
The last death sentence in Virginia was nearly ten years ago, in 2011.
The last execution to take place in Virginia was Will Morva in 2017.
19 murder victim family members in Virginia have publicly called for DP
abolition.
- Including Sen. Janet Howell, Sen. Louise Lucas, and Del. Chris Hurst
29 current and former Virginia prosecutors have endorsed DP abolition.
- Including 3 former Attorneys General and 12 current Commonwealth’s
Attorneys who represent over 40% of Virginia’s population.
