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Thread: Virginia Capital Punishment News

  1. #201
    Senior Member Frequent Poster schmutz's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bobsicles View Post
    Wasn’t West Virginia the first southern state to abolish?
    Maryland and Delaware have better claims to be Southern. I reckon the author in saying "Southern" means "former Confederate".

  2. #202
    Administrator Aaron's Avatar
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    There's also the fact that Maryland and Delaware were never particularly serious or prolific death penalty states. Virginia is a huge symbolic victory for the abolition crowd.
    Don't ask questions, just consume product and then get excited for next products.

    "They will hurt you. They will hurt your grandma, these people. The root cause of this is there's no discipline in the homes, they don't go to school, you know, they live off the government, no personal accountability, and they just beat people up for no reason, and it's disgusting." - Former Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters

  3. #203
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Neil's Avatar
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    Delaware was somewhat serious. They were the smallest death penalty jurisdiction in the country and they had 16 executions before abolition and they had around 40 to 45 death sentences for being such a small state.

  4. #204
    Moderator Bobsicles's Avatar
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    Delaware was more proficient than most states. When Billy Bailey requested to hang even though they didn’t have a gallows, instead of staying the execution they built a gallows in time for the execution. Meanwhile Alabama legalized Nitrogen Hypoxia 2 and a half years ago and they still haven’t done what needs to be done
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  5. #205
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Neil's Avatar
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    Any guesses to how the federal inmates will file appeals for their sentences after Northam signs the repeal bill?

    This is the first abolition bill that’s made it through that’s been retroactive. I wonder how those inmates will file their appeals in the federal jurisdiction after this becomes law?

    How successful do you guys think they’ll be since they will most certainly say it should apply to them since they were sentenced within that state.

  6. #206
    Administrator Aaron's Avatar
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    It would simply mean that another state, such as Indiana, would need to be designated as the state of their executions. But I suspect that the current administration won't request that. So they'll probably just be in the same limbo Higgs was, even though Maryland wasn't retroactive.
    Don't ask questions, just consume product and then get excited for next products.

    "They will hurt you. They will hurt your grandma, these people. The root cause of this is there's no discipline in the homes, they don't go to school, you know, they live off the government, no personal accountability, and they just beat people up for no reason, and it's disgusting." - Former Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters

  7. #207
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Removed DPIC puffery.

    Virginia abolishes the death penalty, becoming first southern state to end capital punishment

    BY CASSIDY MCDONALD and PAULINA SMOLINSKI
    CBS News

    Virginia became the 23rd state to abolish the death penalty Wednesday after Governor Ralph Northam signed legislation that would end the use of capital punishment in the commonwealth.

    "There is no place today for the death penalty in this commonwealth, in the South, or in this nation," Northam said in a speech Wednesday before he signed the bill. He called capital punishment "fundamentally flawed" and noted that it was disproportionately levied against Black people.

    Over Virginia's 400-year history, the commonwealth has executed more than 1,300 people — more than any other state, Northam said. Virginia will become the first state of the former Confederacy to abolish the death penalty, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

    "Virginia has a long and complicated history like other Southern states," Northam said. "The racism and discrimination of our past still echoes in our systems today and as we continue to step beyond the burden of that past, it is vital that we also change the systems in which inequality continues to fester."

    In the 20th century, more than 296 of the 377 defendants that Virginia executed for murder were Black, Northam said, and since 1976, nearly half of the 113 people executed in the state were Black.

    The two men who are currently on death row in Virginia will have their sentences reduced to life imprisonment, according to the legislation. Both men are Black.

    Virginia's General Assembly, which has been controlled by a Democratic majority for a second year, approved the legislation last month.

    "Virginia will become a more just, more righteous, more humane Commonwealth when we abolish the death penalty today," tweeted Virginia state delegate Marcus Simon, a Democrat who supported the bill.

    Human rights group Amnesty International said they welcomed the news, calling the death penalty "irreversible" and "ineffective."

    Kristina Roth, the group's senior advocate for criminal justice programs, said a Black defendant in Virginia is three times more likely to be sentenced to death if the victim is white rather than Black. "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 said in a statement to CBS News.

    Northam signed the legislation Wednesday from Greensville Correctional Center, a prison that houses Virginia's death chamber. Before signing the bill, Northam toured the facility.

    "It is a powerful thing to stand in the room where people were put to death," he said. "It is the moral thing to do to end the death penalty in the Commonwealth of Virginia."

    In the U.S., 42% of those on death row are White, while 41% are Black and 13% are Latinx, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/virgini...ralph-northam/

    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

  8. #208
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mike View Post
    "Virginia has a long and complicated history like other Southern states," Northam said. "The racism and discrimination of our past still echoes in our systems today and as we continue to step beyond the burden of that past, it is vital that we also change the systems in which inequality continues to fester."

  9. #209
    Administrator Aaron's Avatar
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    Excellent post. Northam is certainly no arbiter on morality.
    Don't ask questions, just consume product and then get excited for next products.

    "They will hurt you. They will hurt your grandma, these people. The root cause of this is there's no discipline in the homes, they don't go to school, you know, they live off the government, no personal accountability, and they just beat people up for no reason, and it's disgusting." - Former Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters

  10. #210
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Neil's Avatar
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    It’s a Shame that in 2019 they all didn’t resign when they were under immense pressure to do so. The Republicans would’ve pulled off a coup and Kirk Cox would’ve been in the Governor’s mansion. I like how Northam milked this for all he could. He was touring the execution chamber before he signed off on the repeal bill. At least all Virginia’s executions were carried out in a timely manner no other state can claim their record. Virtually all of their executions were under 10 years from the time of sentencing.

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