To donate by check, phone, or other method, see our More Ways to Give page.
In this world, where everything and everyone is for sale, we must sustain independent media we can trust. If you believe independent journalism is critical to protecting democracy and the common good, please support Common Dreams this Giving Tuesday! We wouldn't exist without you.
Human rights advocates applauded after Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam on Wednesday signed legislation that makes Virginia the 23rd state--and the first in the South--to abolish the death penalty.
"The death penalty system is fundamentally flawed--it is inequitable, ineffective, and it has no place in this commonwealth or this country."
--Gov. Ralph Northam
Northam signed the legislation--which was approved by lawmakers last month--at a ceremony outside the Greensville Correctional Center, home to the state's execution chamber. Virginia has a long history of capital punishment with at least 1,391 documented executions.
"Over our 400-year history, Virginia has executed more people than any other state," Northam noted. "The death penalty system is fundamentally flawed--it is inequitable, ineffective, and it has no place in this commonwealth or this country."
"Virginia has come within days of executing innocent people, and Black defendants have been disproportionately sentenced to death," the governor said. "Abolishing this inhumane practice is the moral thing to do. This is a truly historic day for Virginia, and I am deeply grateful to those who have fought tirelessly and for generations to put an end to capital punishment in our commonwealth."
\u201c\u201cThere is no place for the #deathpenalty today in this Commonwealth, in the South, and in this country.\u201d \u2014 @GovernorVA Ralph Northam on #Virginia's abolition of capital punishment. @DPInfoCtr @VADP @vainterfaith @ACLUVA\u201d— Robert Dunham (@Robert Dunham) 1616610387
Kristina Roth, senior advocate for Criminal Justice Programs at Amnesty International USA, welcomed Northam's anticipated move and echoed his critiques of the practice.
"The death penalty is irreversible, it is ineffective, and it does not deter crime," Roth said. "The way the death penalty is carried out is painful, violent, and inhumane, and it is targeted in this country disproportionately against communities of color. The use of the death penalty as a punishment is outdated, fundamentally broken, and must end once and for all."
"Virginia, once a stronghold of the Confederacy, now becomes the first southern state to end the ultimate denial of human rights that is the death penalty," she added.
"The use of the death penalty as a punishment is outdated, fundamentally broken, and must end once and for all."
--Kristina Roth, Amnesty International USA
Highlighting the commonwealth's "sordid past with the use of the death penalty against Black people, applied arbitrarily," Roth pointed out that "a Black defendant in Virginia is three times more likely to be sentenced to death if the victim is white rather than Black."
Other supporters of the legislation also emphasized how the death penalty has affected people of color in Virginia for centuries.
"Virginia's legacy on the death penalty was so closely connected to its history of slavery and lynching," said Rev. Dr. LaKeisha Cook of Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy. "Now that it is coming to an end, we can start a new chapter that embraces an evidence-based approach to public safety: one that values the dignity of all human beings and is focused on transforming the justice system into one rooted in fairness, accountability, and redemption."
Sarah Craft, Death Penalty Program director at Equal Justice USA said that "Virginia will become the first former Confederate state to abolish capital punishment following a year that saw the dismantling of 168 Confederate symbols across the nation--and nearly half of them in the commonwealth alone."
"This is the final action of a crushing blow against the death penalty, one of our nation's most visible and egregious responses to violence," she added. "It is part of our country's reckoning with a deep and wide legacy of racial injustice."
In a tweet Wednesday, U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) celebrated his state's action and promised he would "continue to push legislation in the Senate to end the death penalty at the federal level."
\u201cI\u2019m proud to see Virginia abolish this brutal and racist institution. Today, Virginia gives us hope that work done for justice is not in vain, and that progress is possible for all.\n\nI will continue to push legislation in the Senate to end the death penalty at the federal level.\u201d— Tim Kaine (@Tim Kaine) 1616612743
While Virginia joins 22 other states and Washington, D.C. that have outlawed capital punishment, members of Congress and President Joe Biden face growing pressure to end the practice at the federal level. After a 17-year hiatus, former President Donald Trump resumed executions in 2019, despite concerns about the drug protocol and global calls for an end to the death penalty.
Trump oversaw what critical lawmakers called a "frenzied and unprecedented" spree of federal executions. As a candidate, Biden vowed to work on passing a bill that would eliminate the death penalty "at the federal level, and incentivize states to follow the federal government's example." Earlier this month, United Nations human rights experts urged him to do everything he can to end all U.S. executions.
Amnesty's Roth said Wednesday that the 13 federal executions carried out under Trump "raised the specter of the same irreparable problems we know the death penalty has at all levels, including racial bias, the executions of people with intellectual disabilities, and arbitrariness of defendants sentenced to death."
"This step from Virginia is a welcome unintended consequence of the Trump execution spree," she said. "We hope to see more states work to retire this most extreme punishment to where it belongs--as a relic of the past, not a part of our future."
Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam on Wednesday declared a temporary state of emergency in the capitol of Richmond and banned the carrying of weapons at a gun rights rally scheduled for next week, citing threats of armed demonstrators storming government buildings.
"We have received credible intelligence from our law enforcement agencies that there are groups with malicious plans for the rally that is planned for Monday," Northam said in a press conference announcing the state of emergency.
The order (pdf) ends on Tuesday, January 21 at 5:00pm.
The declaration was triggered by credible threats of violence discovered by law enforcement from potential attendees of the rally. Northam said some of the "out-of-state militia groups and hate groups planning to travel from across the country to disrupt our democratic process with acts of violence" cited the white supremacist violence in the nearby city of Charlottesville in 2017, where a young woman named Heather Heyer was murdered, as inspiration.
"Please know that we have been preparing extensively to protect public safety at Monday's rally," said Northam. "But no one wants another incident like the one we saw in Charlottesville."
According to VICE reporter Tess Owen, the violence that occurred in Charlottesville looms large over the order and the expected enforcement:
In addition to banning weapons on Capitol grounds, Northam also said he'd established a unified command between state police, Capitol police, the Richmond police department, and the city's first responder teams. This is a critical move--one that's likely borne out of the lessons learned from the massive law enforcement failures during Unite the Right, which left one dead and dozens injured. Months after that rally, an independent review team released a searing 220-page report analyzing how law enforcement's disorganization and failure to coordinate across agencies allowed the violent, ugly scenes that unfolded that day.
The rally, "Lobby Day," is being organized by the Virginia Citizens Defense League.
As NPR reported:
On a Facebook page organizing the gun rights demonstration hosted by the Virginia Citizens Defense League, several commenters expressed frustration at Northam's move to restrict guns from the capitol grounds. One wrote, "This is simply a move to infringe on not only our 2nd Amendment rights but our 1st Amendment rights as well."
"This isn't about the Second Amendment," said activist Molly Conger, "this is about threats of terrorism."