It’s time to reform Virginia’s
criminal justice system.
And it begins with abolishing
the death penalty.
In 2020, there is a much-needed discussion happening
about reforming Virginia’s criminal justice statutes - from
modernizing marijuana laws to raising the larceny threshold
Vi RG | N IA N S FO R to working towards racial equity in sentencing.
But no conversation about righting the wrongs of a flawed justice
A LT E R N AT | V E S system should begin without acknowledging the socioeconomic, mental
health and racial discrepancies in sentencing for capital murder.
TO TH E D) E ATH PE N A LTY It is past time to have an honest conversation about the death penalty.
It is past time to end executions in Virginia once and for all.
debating HB85 / SB449, consider the facts
f
Capital punishment is not a deterrent
to violent crime. Period.
Most of Virginia abandoned use of
the death penalty decades ago.
The debate is over. In four separate scientific studies
from Carnegie Mellon University, the Stanford Law
Review, the National Research Council and the
University of Colorado-Boulder, data shows that
violence and murder rates in death penalty states
are no lower than in non-death penalty states.
What’s more, an Amnesty International survey
of criminologists revealed that over 88% believed
the death penalty was not a deterrent to murder.
Scientists agree, by an overwhelming majority.
Public opinion increasingly supports
alternatives to capital punishment.
Not only has no one has been sentenced to death
in eight years, but for a majority of Virginia’s
local jurisdictions, capital punishment has been
a thing of the past. Consider this breakdown of
Virginia’s 95 counties and 38 independent cities:
+ 9 localities (14%) have never had an ex-
ecution for a crime committed there
+, 32 localities (24%) had their last execu-
tion take place more than 100 years ago
+, 6 localities (35%) had an execu-
tion take place within the last 50 years
Virginia should lead the way.
For the first time in over 30 years, two major polling
firms have a majority of Americans favoring life in
prison without parole over the death penalty. In one
survey, support has jumped 15 points since 2014.
Momentum is on the side of death penalty abolition.
Gallup Poll (November 2019): 60%-36%
Quinnipiac Poll (March 2018): 51%-37%
Executions are more expensive to
taxpayers than life imprisonment.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court reintroduced capital
punishment in 1976, Virginia’s execution rate
is second in the nation behind only Texas.
Currently, Virginia is one of only 11 states that has
carried out an execution in the past five years. Compare
this to our geographic neighbors - North Carolina
has suspended the practice, while West Virginia and
Maryland have repealed capital punishment altogether.
Virginia can become the first Southern
state to eliminate the death penalty.
Cost analyses from across the country show that
between fees for trial defense, administrative court
costs and prison time, taxpayers are on the hook for
more money when paying for the death penalty when
compared to cases seeking life imprisonment.
Further, data indicates that the greatest costs associated
with the death penalty occur prior and during the
initial trial, not in post-conviction proceedings.
Virginians for Alternatives to the
Death Penalty (VADP) was formed in
1991 as a nonprofit citizens’ advocacy
organization dedicated to educating
the public about alternatives to the
Commonwealth's costly, risky and
ineffective practice of capital punishment.
Case Study: Earl Washington, Jr.
Since 1973, 167 innocent death-row inmates
have been exonerated and released, and
eighteen people have been wrongfully convicted
of murder in Virginia since 1989 alone.
One such case in Virginia was Earl Washington,
Jr., an intellectually disabled man that was
coerced into confessing to a 1982 rape and
murder in Culpeper County. It was only after
18 years of appeals and two separate stays
of execution that DNA testing was done,
ultimately absolving him of the crimes.
He was pardoned and released from prison in
2000, and later received settlements from local law
enforcement and the Commonwealth of Virginia.
How many other Earl Washingtons
are out there right now?
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