NORFOLK, Va. — After more than 400 years and nearly 1,400 lives, the death penalty is dead in Virginia.
Gov. Ralph Northam signed legislation Wednesday abolishing it in a state that has executed more people than any other. The ceremony was at Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt, where lethal injections and electrocutions have been carried out.
Lawmakers in the Democratically controlled House of Delegates and state Senate passed identical bills last month that would end death sentences and executions. There are two men on death row in the state. Their sentences will be converted to life without the possibility of parole.
Virginia will be the 23rd state to stop executions.
BREAKING: Gov. Ralph Northam just signed legislation to end the death penalty in Virginia.
— WAVY TV 10 (@WAVY_News) March 24, 2021
The commonwealth is the first southern state to end capital punishment. https://t.co/HyM7Pawk0F pic.twitter.com/NP20IlzRv6
Historically, Virginia has used the death penalty more than any other state, executing nearly 1,400 people since its days as a colony, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976, Virginia, with 113 executions, is second only to Texas with 570.
But over the past two decades, capital punishment has steadily faded, including in Virginia. The Death Penalty Information Center says 22 states have abolished it, with 12 others not having had an execution in more than a decade.
Changes in law — along with prosecutors seeking the ultimate punishment in far fewer cases — has resulted in death sentences falling to 34 nationally in 2019. That’s down from 315 death sentences handed down in 1996, the Death Penalty Information Center’s numbers show.
Executions, meantime, fell to 22 in 2019, down from a high of 98 in 1999.
The drops follow a shift in public opinion: A 2018 Gallup poll showed 54% of respondents support the death penalty for murder. Though that’s up five points from the 49% who said the same two years earlier, it’s down significantly from the 78% who held that view in the late 1990s.
In Virginia, only five people have been executed since 2011 — down sharply from the 57 executions performed between 1995 and 2000. The state’s last two death sentences were handed down 10 years ago.
