Virginia advocates set to try again on death penalty repeal

RICHMOND — Death penalty opponents are cautiously optimistic they have enough bipartisan support from lawmakers to get a bill passed next year ending executions in Virginia, a state that has put more people to death in its long history than any other.

Democratic Sen. Scott Surovell is again sponsoring a measure that would abolish the death penalty, and Republican Sen. Bill Stanley said he will sign on this year as a chief co-patron. The measure would commute the sentences of the only two inmates on Virginia’s death row to life in prison without parole.

Surovell said he has always opposed the death penalty but knew passing it was politically impossible with a GOP majority in either chamber. Now, with Democrats holding slim majorities in the House and Senate for a second year, he thinks there’s an opening. So do advocacy groups working to build support for the bill.

“I think we’ve got a real shot,” Surovell said. “I don’t have the support of my entire caucus, but I think with Sen. Stanley we’ve got a shot.”

If the measure passes, it would likely have the support of Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam, who has said he would sign legislation ending the death penalty if it were replaced with life without parole.

Virginia has executed nearly 1,400 people in more than four centuries, more than any other state, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

But executions have slowed in recent years — the last inmate put to death was William Morva in 2017 — and no death sentences have been imposed in the state since 2011. “Right now the death penalty is a bit of a paper tiger in Virginia because juries just are not returning that sentence,” said Michael Stone, executive director of Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.

Stone attributes the move away from death sentences in part to the recent number of high-profile news stories about wrongful convictions in Virginia. He thinks

those cases have not only dissuaded jurors from issuing such sentences, but also built support among lawmakers for abolition.

In meetings, Stone said lawmakers often bring up the cases of Keith Allen Harward and Thomas Haynesworth and talk about fears that an innocent person could be sentenced to death.

Harward was wrongfully convicted of the 1982 rape of a woman and murder of her husband based on bite marks, but was cleared by DNA in 2016. Haynesworth, who was wrongfully convicted of multiple counts of rape, was exonerated in 2011 after serving 27 years. Both cases recently were featured in the Netflix documentary series “The Innocence Files.”

Stanley has sponsored legislation he intends to file again in 2021 to help people like Harward whose convictions were based on what he called “junk science.” He said Harward’s case and others like it are a reminder that “we don’t it right, we don’t get it perfect every time.”

“And I think that has to be a consideration for anyone considering this (death penalty) legislation. And if they do, I think the answer is obvious,” he said.