The Nation’s Racism & Virginia’s Death Penalty
To watch a police officer, crush the life out of George Floyd’s body, while
other officers stood by complicit, is a chilling reminder that the racial terror
of Black Americans never ended. The recent murders of Breonna Taylor,
Ahmaud Arbery, Rayshard Brooks, and too many others are disturbingly
similar to the thousands of documented lynchings that occurred in the
United States from the Reconstruction Era through the Second World War.
This country’s failure to effectively combat, or even confront, systemic
racism has resulted in the brutal, discriminatory treatment of Black and
Brown people for generations. Nowhere is racial bigotry more insidious
than in the application of America’s harshest punishment, death.
Bryan Stevenson’s scholarship with the Equal Justice Initiative has shown
that capital punishment is directly related to lynching. From 1880 to 1930
at least 70 black men in Virginia were lynched. Many of these lynchings
were commemorated with postcards that were sent to the family and
friends of the white witnesses.
Southern states with the highest lynching rates now lead the nation in the
number of executions. Shamefully, Virginia is number one on that list,
having executed more people in its history than any other state.
Scholars and lawyers - including the US Department of Justice - have
examined the role of race with capital punishment. The studies reaffirm
what many minority communities already know: racial bias is inextricably
tied to the death penalty. While Black Americans comprise about 13 percent
of the U.S. population, they account for 42 percent of America’s death row.
But it is the victim’s race that often determines sentencing outcomes.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 76 percent of those
executed since 1976 had White victims while only 15 percent of defendants
that killed Black people were executed. In Virginia, of the 1,390
documented executions carried out since 1608, only four involved a White
defendant killing a Black victim - all since 1997. Fhis-datasuggests that
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Virginia’s 400-year death penalty history is littered with horrific abuses and
flagrant misconduct. An egregious case of racial bias occurred in 1949
when seven young Black men were charged in Martinsville with the rape of
a White woman. All seven men - several falsely threatened into confessing
with non-existent lynch mobs - were convicted of rape and aiding and
abetting rape by white juries, then assembly-line electrocuted on two
separate days.
In stark contrast, at the same time as the Martinsville cases, the Norfolk
Journal reported that a White Virginia man named Murrel Dudley was
convicted of raping a “feeble-minded colored woman.” He was fined $20.
Seventy years later, racial considerations still permeate our courtrooms and
improperly affect who lives and who dies. Black and Brown people are more
likely to be prosecuted for capital murder, sentenced to death, and
ultimately executed, especially if the victim is White. Capital defendants in
the Commonwealth are restrained by waist chains and leg irons while
seated in a courtroom adorned with portraits commemorating men of the
Confederacy. Typically, the judge, prosecutors and defense attorneys are all
White. As lawyers of color, we are profoundly aware that we and our clients
are the only minorities in the room.
No matter how well meaning and intentioned, race and the death penalty
are two inseparable sides of the same coin.
ia = There have
been no executions in Virginia since 2017. It has been nearly a decade since
the last Virginia jury handed down a death sentence, which was overturned
by the Fourth Circuit in 2018. That same year, a Prince William County jury
rejected a death sentence for a Black soldier who killed a White police
officer. Virginians have turned away from the death penalty in the
courtroom.
It is now time for the General Assembly to follow suit. All killings,
particularly those carried out by the state in a biased manner, dilute the
morality of society as a whole. Meaningful and equitable criminal justice
reform, born in the wake of the recent police murders of Black Americans
and subsequent protests, must include abolishing the death penalty.
Governor Northam has promised to sign a death penalty repeal bill. Virginia
legislators, supported by Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty,
plan to introduce an abolition bill in the 2021 General Assembly. Virginia
has the opportunity to be the first southern state to abolish capital
punishment to correct the wrongs of the past and advance towards a more
just, equitable, and unbiased tomorrow.
Kristina Leslie is an Assistant Federal Public Defender and Vivian
Hernandez is a Capital Defense Lawyer. Both formerly served in the
Capital Defender Office in Northern Virginia, which represents those
charged with capital murder at the trial level. Ms. Leslie is the President of
Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. The views expressed do not
reflect the views of the Department of Defense, the United States
Government, or any agency or instrumentality thereof.
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