RICHMOND
With a governor supportive of expanding capital punishment finally in office, this was going to be the year a perennial effort to repeal the state’s so-called triggerman law finally found success.
But Monday, a Senate committee that had reliably approved the effort in past years voted it down in the face of arguments about the costs of making more crimes eligible for the death penalty – and a plea from Virginia’s former chief executioner to stop expanding capital punishment.
The Senate Courts of Justice Committee also voted against a bill that would have expanded capital punishment to include those who killed various emergency responders while they were on duty, including fire marshals, firefighters, special forest wardens, and emergency medical technicians .
The triggerman repeal bill, sponsored by Sen. Mark Obenshain, R-Harrisonburg, is an effort to make accomplices to murder eligible for the death penalty along with those who actually did the deed.
The triggerman law “draws distinctions that are artificial between two people,” Obenshain said. “They share the intent to commit that capital murder and they should be subject to capital punishment.”
Proponents of changing the law cite the trial of Washington-area sniper John Allen Muhammad, in which prosecutors were initially hampered because Muhammad’s younger accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo actually pulled the trigger during the shootings.
Obenshain’s bill passed both the House and Senate last year, and was stopped only by Gov. Timothy M. Kaine’s veto. Many believed that with Gov. Bob McDonnell now in office, the bill would again pass through the legislature and become law.
But some small changes on the Senate Courts of Justice committee barred its way. Former Sen. Ken Stolle, R–Virginia Beach, who had previously voted for the bill, was replaced by a Democrat.
And former gubernatorial candidate Sen. Creigh Deeds, D–Bath County, who had previously been supportive of Obenshain’s measures, voted against the bill this time around. The bill failed on a 9-6 vote.
“I went in the room intending to vote for the bill,” Deeds said. But he said he changed his mind after hearing the people who’d come to speak against it. “The testimony today was very compelling.”
Those included Virginia’s former chief executioner Jerry Givens, who oversaw 62 executions between 1982 and 1999. He was in favor of the death penalty at the time, he said, but since then, time and too many state-ordered deaths had changed his mind, he said.
The legislators who decide state policy don’t suffer when they expand capital punishment, Givens said. “The people that have to carry out these executions are the ones that have to suffer.”
Alicia Wittmeyer, (804) 697-1561, alicia.wittmeyer@pilotonline.com
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We're Losing the Race!
Dang, we'll never catch up to Saudi Arabia and North Korea (let alone Texas) as the government with the most executions. I say we ought to have stonings in the public square for those caught in adultery and shoplifting. And why we're at at, let's do away with jury trials, due process, the presumption of innocence, and those other bothersome words in our constitution that activist judges have misinterpreted. If it was good enough for our Old Testament fathers it ought to be good enough for us. After all, we don't want to be seen as weak on crime.
Death Penalty?
So here I sit as a Auxiliary Police Officer in one of the states most dangerous cities. I have been afforded the opportunity to work in a specialized unit that brings me closer to the people they have chosen to protect by voting down this bill. So they mean to tell me, that if the people I pursue, feel it necessary to kill me they will not be eligible for the death penalty as a group? I have no remorse for having the feeling that all people involved in the death of a public servant not only should receive the lethal injection, but they will die having deserved it. I refuse to believe that the costs outweigh the reward. If you do not share the same level of disappointment that I do, please fell free to walk a day in my shoes for free.
Evidence, not emotions.
I can't imagine there are many people who do not appreciate the work our police do. If there was any evidence that the penalty did anything to make our police safer, I'd be all for it. But the evidence doesn't support that. The death penalty was not created to make people feel better, nor to exact revenge. It was created to deter crime. Unfortunately, it hasn't. That you are still concerned about being killed in the line of duty proves it.
A murder trail is not cheap for anyone. The cost to process a convicted murderer to death row is in the millions and would pay for a hundred years or more of incarceration at $40,000 a year.
Population control
A sure GOP way of introducing population control in the Commonwealth! Make more guns easier to obtain by more people, and then expand the execution rate. A self-limiting population. Less schools to fund, fewer low-income pregnancies,No need for medicaid. Perfect! (Excuse me. They're coming to take me away, ho-ho he-he ha-ha)
Once again, re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic
Look around. You'll find that more and more states are discontinuing the death penalty altogether because 1) there is no proof that it deters crime, 2) it's far more expensive for a state to go through all the processes necessary to get to the actual death than it is to keep that same prisoner in jail for the fullness of his or her life, 3) DNA testing and other new forms of scientific analysis are making is clearer and clearer than innocent people have been put to death for crimes they did not commit and, as if that weren't enough, 4) it's also abundantly clear that the death penalty discriminates against the poor and others who do not have access to the qualified lawyers or who are in states where public defenders are ill-equipped, underfunded and inexperienced in representing murder case clients.
No judge wants the death of an innocent person on his conscience. No state should have any hand in the possible murder of innocent persons. All the death penalty does is make the revenge crowd happy.
"4) it's also abundantly
"4) it's also abundantly clear that the death penalty discriminates against the poor and others who do not have access to the qualified lawyers or who are in states where public defenders are ill-equipped, underfunded and inexperienced in representing murder case clients."
You've identified the problem correctly: not enough wealthy or white people get executed. But what you suggest - executing fewer people - isn't a solution to that problem.
And as for "2)it's far more expensive for a state to go through all the processes necessary to get to the actual death than it is to keep that same prisoner in jail for the fullness of his or her life", that's because obstructionists like yourself have run up the cost. It isn't an argument, it's a boast - and not a boast to be proud of.
in response. ..
"3) DNA testing and other new forms of scientific analysis are making is clearer and clearer than innocent people have been put to death for crimes they did not commit"
Under that same argument shouldn't we assume that new forms of scientific analysis will make it clearer and clearer of people's guilt as well. In that case we can increase the amount of death penalty convictions with a clear conscience AND based on this new analysis we can limit the number of appeals making the whole process cheaper, faster and more efficient.
Bad vote
Yet more proof that Democrats are across the board weak on crime and anti-law enforcement. I have lost count of the reason NOT to vote for Democrats, to any office. And here is yet another reason.
Execute non-murderers too.
We need to correct the mistake that is the 8th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution so that the death penalty can be restored to use for deserving non-murder crimes like high-value financial crimes, corruption by public officials, and forcible rape.
Creigh Deeds's immoral vote against fixing the triggerman rule makes me regret having voted for him as Governor.
The Mistake of the 8th Amendment?
A judge should allow you to be held indefinitely without bond for a minor offense and you think we should return to the old days when folks were drawn and quartered; placed in stocks and flogged in the market place for being drunk in public; have our hand cut off for shoplifting; the drowning of "witches"; allow "trial by ordeal"? Those were some of the quaint customs being practiced before the Revolution.