US state of Virginia abolishes death penalty

Virginia has second-highest number of executions and is first southern state to outlaw capital punishment

Virginia Governor Ralph Northam looks at an electric chair before signing a bill abolishing the death penalty in Virginia. AP

The governor of Virginia on Wednesday signed legislation making it the 23rd state to abolish the death penalty.

It was a major shift for the state, which had the second highest number of executions in the US.

The legislation was the result of a years-long battle by Democrats, who said the death penalty was applied disproportionately to people of colour, the mentally ill and the poor.

Republicans said the death penalty should remain a sentencing option for especially heinous crimes and to bring justice to victims and their families.

Virginia’s new Democratic majority, in full control of the state's General Assembly for a second year, won the debate last month when the Senate and House of Delegates passed bills banning capital punishment.

Governor Ralph Northam, a Democrat, signed the House and Senate bills in a ceremony on Wednesday after touring the execution chamber at the Greensville Correctional Centre.

There 102 people have been put to death since executions were moved from the Virginia State Penitentiary in the early 1990s.

“There is no place today for the death penalty in this commonwealth, in the South or in this nation,” Mr Northam said before signing the legislation.

He said the death penalty has been disproportionately handed to black people and is the product of a flawed judicial system.

Since 1973, more than 170 people have been released from death row after evidence of their innocence was uncovered, Mr Northam said.

“We can’t give out the ultimate punishment without being 100 per cent sure that we’re right and we can’t sentence people to that ultimate punishment knowing that the system doesn’t work the same for everyone,” he said.

Virginia has executed about 1,400 people since its days as a British colony.

In modern times, the state is second only to Texas in the number of executions it has carried out, with 113 since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, the non-profit Death Penalty Information Centre said.

Only two men remain on death row in Virginia.

Anthony Juniper was sentenced to death for the 2004 killings of his former girlfriend, two of her children and her brother.

Thomas Porter received the death penalty for the 2005 killing of a Norfolk police officer.

Their sentences will be converted to life in prison without parole.

Three more states have death sentence moratoriums in place that were imposed by their governors.

Death penalty opponents say passing the legislation in Virginia could mark the beginning of the end for capital punishment in the southern states, where most executions take place.

“Virginia’s death penalty has deep roots in slavery, lynchings and Jim Crow segregation,” said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Centre.

“The symbolic value of dismantling this tool that has been used historically as a mechanism for racial oppression by a legislature sitting in the former capital of the Confederacy can’t be overstated.”