1/27/2021 Opinion | Virginia is on the verge of abolishing the death penalty. Other states should follow suit. - The Washington Post
Opinion: Virginia is on the verge of
abolishing the death penalty. Other
states should follow suit.
Opinion by Editorial Board
Jan. 27, 2021 at 3:47 p.m. EST
THE COMMONWEALTH of Virginia has carried out more executions than any other state. Now, a bill to end capital
punishment in Virginia is making its way through the state legislature and toward the governor’s desk.
The prospects for passage are good: While the measure is being championed by Democrats, who hold slim majorities
in both chambers of the state legislature, it has attracted bipartisan support. Should a parallel measure pass the
House, Gov. Ralph Northam (D) will sign the legislation into law, making Virginia the 23rd state to abolish the death
penalty. (The governors of California, Oregon and Pennsylvania have imposed moratoriums on executions.)
Virginia would also become the first Southern state to abolish the death penalty. This is a momentous reversal: The
state has outpaced almost every other in putting its citizens to death in the modern era. Since 1976, when the
Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty, Virginia has executed 113 people — behind only Texas, a far outlier at
570 executions.
The potential for death-penalty abolition in Virginia is particularly welcome news following the spate of federal
executions carried out in recent months. After a 17-year pause in federal executions, the Trump administration raced
to kill several people on death row in its final days — an extremely rare occurrence during the transition of power. As
Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted in a forceful dissent on a decision that allowed the final execution to go forward, the
Trump administration executed more than three times as many people in its final six months as the federal
government had executed in the previous six decades.
Corey Johnson and Dustin Higgs, the final two people put to death by the Trump administration, had both
contracted covid-19 while on death row. Their lawyers argued that during their executions, lung damage from their
illnesses would cause their lungs to rupture quickly, fill with fluids and create a sensation of drowning to death.
The death penalty is a cruelty unworthy of this nation even when the condemned don’t experience unimaginable
suffering in their final moments. The practice is expensive, error-ridden and plagued by racial bias. Those sentenced
to die are disproportionately Black and poor. And, since 1973, more than 170 people have been exonerated
and released from death row. Worryingly, defendants commonly land there in large part due to inadequate legal
representation, a function of poverty. An irreversible punishment that is disproportionately handed down to Black,
intellectually disabled and poor Americans cannot pass for justice.
The momentum in Virginia to turn away from state-sponsored killing is heartening, especially considering that a
more limited measure to ban executions for those with severe mental illness failed to pass just last year. The tides
appear to be changing quickly, no doubt in part due to the racial justice protests that followed George Floyd’s death.
Other states should follow Virginia in leaving behind the gruesome practice. If Virginia can shift so quickly in
renouncing an unworthy tradition, let us hope it can happen anywhere.
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