Virginia becomes the first state in the south of the US to abolish the death penalty | International

Pending the signing of the governor, Virginia lawmakers this Monday approved to abolish the death penalty in the state that has carried out the most executions in United States history. Not only that: it is also the first state in the south of the country where the areas for the death penalty are concentrated, whatever that does. When the governor, Democrat Ralph Northam, signs the bill and it goes into effect, Virginia will be the 23rd state to abolish the death penalty and leave 27 others in effect (including the federal government and military courts).

The democratic majority in both houses has pushed the law forward on the grounds that the death penalty has been disproportionately applied to people of color, the mentally disabled and the homeless. Local Republicans are opposed as the measure leaves victims and their families without recourse and that certain types of crimes are so dire that they allow no other option. A Republican senator joined the Democratic representatives in the vote.

The state of Virginia has executed about 1,400 people since the first time, in 1608, in its days as a colony, according to the NGO Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC, in its English acronym), almost the same number as those who have been living in the entire country since 1976. (1,532). Since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, Virginia has executed 113 people, the second most important after Texas. This sad percentage, according to the aforementioned NGO, is due to the combination of weak defense and the country’s most draconian procedural norms, under which convicts were denied any assessment of claims made by their lawyers in flawed form, including when , for reasons beyond the control of the defendant, his defense failed to meet the submission deadlines.

The law’s enactment has saved the only two inmates on death row in Virginia, both convicted in the first decade of this century. Detainees will serve a life sentence without the option of obtaining parole.

“This painful story exposes the racism that underlies the death penalty,” he wrote in the paper last week. The Washington Post Democrat Tim Kaine, who was a Governor of Virginia and currently represents the state in the United States Senate. “In the 19th century, Virginia executed 513 blacks and only 41 whites,” Kaine recalls in the article, adding that crimes that only they are classified as criminal offenses when committed by a white person are punishable offenses when committed. by a black person. Between 1908 and 1965, 55 people – all black – were executed for rape or attempted rape. As a lawyer, and before making the leap into politics, Kaine represented several inmates on death row.

According to a Gallup poll, only 55% of Americans believe the death penalty is the appropriate punishment for a murderer, the lowest support in history, despite Republican Donald Trump retiring from the presidency with a track record of executions of federal prisoners. In July last year, no federal prisoner had been executed in 17 years, a record set by the pace of the Republican government, responsible for the highest number of executions in a hundred years, and in violation of the noticeable downward trend in the states.

The number of federal prisoners executed by the Trump administration in less than a year exceeded the total of prisoners executed by the United States during that period. On Oct. 1, there were 2,494 death row inmates from the 28 states, including Virginia, that used the death penalty, according to the DPIC. To the total, another 55 had to be added in federal prisons and a further four in the military. Since 1998, when 295 convictions were imposed, the number has decreased dramatically year on year, with the lowest number of cases recorded in 2020 (18). President-elect Joe Biden has pledged to end the use of the death penalty.