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Thread: Virginia Capital Punishment News

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    Virginia Capital Punishment News

    State’s budget woes bring a slowdown in capital cases


    In the 18 months since he took the helm of the Richmond area capital defender’s office, David Baugh said he has seen about 10 capital cases end in pleas after prosecutors pulled the death penalty off the table.

    The result? Life in prison for the defendants and likely a savings to Virginia’s taxpayers, who won’t have to foot the bill for defense fees associated with lengthy trials and years of appeals, Baugh said.

    With a $3.5 billion budget shortfall, the state has to make some tough decisions on using manpower and money to prosecute the capital cases, he said. Three out of four state capital defender offices are understaffed. State officials already have frozen vacant positions. Now, Baugh said, the state should consider freezing capital punishment as the next cost-saving measure.

    “The state ought to give serious thought to a moratorium on the death penalty until the budget gets straight,” Baugh said. “You’d be amazed how much the state pays.”

    The state paid more than $1 million to cover the defense of John Allen Muhammad, who was executed last month for one in a series of sniper shootings that terrorized Northern Virginia in 2002.

    Other capital cases carry significant costs, although not nearly as high as the bills for Muhammad’s defense. For example, the state paid $150,472 to cover defense expenses for Carl Lee Walton, said Katya Herndon, spokeswoman for the state Supreme Court.

    Walton, of Virginia Beach, shot and killed two women at point-blank range in 2005. His first trial, in 2007, ended in mistrial. He was convicted at a second trial in October, but rather than sentence him to death, a judge ordered he spend life in prison without the possibility of parole.

    Thomas A. Porter was sentenced to death in 2007 for capital murder in the killing of Norfolk police Officer Stanley C. Reaves. The state has paid about $127,000 to cover his defense expenses, Herndon said.

    Those figures include the fees – $150 per hour out of court, $200 per hour in court – for private attorneys who are court-appointed. Salaries of capital defenders, who are automatically appointed to represent indigent defendants, and expenses amassed by prosecutors are not included.

    Taxpayers are covering costs of 13 other active capital cases across Virginia. In October, Douglas Ramseur took the helm of the capital defender’s office for the state’s southeastern region. Since then, one attorney has retired from the Norfolk-based office and another announced plans to leave for a position in a private firm.

    The departures leave Ramseur and one other attorney to handle four capital cases, including one in Virginia Beach. Although he has received a waiver allowing him to quickly fill one of those vacancies, Ramseur said it likely will be February or March before a new attorney is hired.

    “That’s the challenge, finding people who want to take on death penalty cases,” he said. The cases are stressful and the pay is low compared to a position in a private firm, he said. The turnover in the office was among the reasons a judge agreed to postpone Ted Vincent Carter’s capital murder trial, originally set for Jan. 26. Carter is accused of robbing and shooting a police detective who was trying to buy drugs during an undercover operation last year.

    Ramseur declined to speak about his Richmond colleague’s suggestion, but Virginia Beach Commonwealth’s Attorney Harvey Bryant noted the death penalty’s role as a deterrent and said cost shouldn’t be a factor in the state’s decision to seek it.

    “The cost of it never has been, and never should be, a factor in whether to seek it,” he said.

    Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, a Democrat and Roman Catholic, has made his opposition to the death penalty clear while campaigning and while in office, spokeswoman Lynda Tran said. But, she said, he has allowed 11 executions to be carried out.

    She knew of no formal proposals to halt capital punishment in the commonwealth for budgetary reasons. “What we’re looking at is a $3.5 billion budget gap,” she said. “Whatever the cost of the moratorium might be in terms of savings, I’m not sure it would have a huge savings anyway.”

    Bryant, who plans to argue for Carter’s execution in Virginia Beach next year, said a moratorium wouldn’t be approved by the General Assembly or by Gov.-elect Bob McDonnell. The state’s population wouldn’t approve it, either, he said.

    “I have enough faith in Virginians in general that, if it was put to a referendum, they would never say let’s just stop the death penalty because it costs too much.”

    http://hamptonroads.com/node/533131

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    New law allows death penalty in fire marshal slayings

    Under a new law passed by the General Assembly this year, anyone who kills a fire marshal could face the death penalty.

    The bill passed the House of Delegates and the Senate but has not yet been signed by Gov. Bob McDonnell.

    Danville Fire Chief David Eagle said fire marshals have the same arrest powers of police officers and are put into dangerous situations during their investigations.

    “And because of that, they should have the same benefits,” Eagle said.

    In Virginia, killing a police officer is a capital offense.

    Fire Marshal Shelby Irving said fire marshals are surrounded by firefighters and police during their investigation, but they install smoke alarms, look at burn permits and do inspections on their own, which leaves them vulnerable.

    Some new city residents confronted her after Danville annexed areas of Pittsylvania County in 1988.

    “A lot of people felt like they didn’t want to be a part of the city,” Irving said. “And we didn’t have a right to come and do a fire inspection.”

    Irving said it got rough, and she left a few houses after people challenged her.

    “Our uniform is like a police uniform,” she said. “And we don’t carry the gun.”

    Retired Fire Marshal Woodrow Williams Jr. stumbled into some dangerous situations during his 31-year career with the Danville Fire Department.

    Williams responded to a car fire on Schoolfield Drive about 10 years ago, he said. Williams started the investigation about 10 a.m. on a warm, sunny day.

    He tried to tear out the backseat to get to the trunk, but he couldn’t tear out the left-hand side. He backed out of the car and saw a man nearby with a rifle pointed at him and a Danville police officer.

    “I hollered, ‘He’s got a gun,’” Williams said.

    Williams ran behind the car, and the police officer drew his gun and started walking toward the man.

    “Hold on a minute, I don’t have a gun,” Williams shouted to the officer. “If you miss him, and he comes this way, what am I supposed to do?”

    The officer stayed with Williams and called for help. By the time police got there, the man walked back into the house and put the gun on the bed.

    Williams never learned why the man targeted him and the officer.

    He hopes the bill will protect Virginia’s fire marshals.

    “Maybe it will make someone stop and think, I hope so,” Williams said. “I’d hate to think that someone would get hurt out there.”

    http://www2.godanriver.com/gdr/news/local/article/new_law_allows_death_penalty_in_fire_marshal_slayi ngs/18963/

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    Lawyer, former legislator spar in death penalty debate


    A former legislator argued that the death penalty is a useful deterrent to murder, and an Amherst lawyer asserted that the penalty is unjust — partly because one in 10 men who have been on death row were released after their innocence was proven.

    Vance Wilkins, once speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, took the pro-death-penalty side of a debate Tuesday night against Stephen Martin, who defended one of the teenage shooters in the Sal’s Pizza robbery-homicide in Madison Heights in 1984.


    Wilkins and Martin participated in the first of a planned series of community discussions sponsored by Amherst Presbyterian Church. Ned Kable, formerly an elder of the church, was a panelist during the debate.


    Kable said he felt the death penalty, which has faded as a topic in political campaigns over the past five years, “is an important issue that should be discussed,” so he and other church leaders organized this debate and others that will follow on topics such as poverty in Amherst County.


    Lawrence Janow, a retired judge of juvenile and domestic relations court in Amherst, and who now teaches at Sweet Briar College, served as moderator of the debate.
    Its purpose, Janow said, was “not to change anybody’s mind” about the death penalty but “to give you both sides.” About 50 people attended, and a few asked questions of the panelists.


    Wilkins and Martin focused their arguments on the death penalty’s legal and social aspects, and never made biblical references. Janow commended them for “not bringing that aspect into it.”


    Martin said, “the question of whether you support the death penalty should not be confused with the emotions we have when we read about terrible crimes,” and it’s normal to think a perpetrator may deserve to die.


    America’s justice system is a “process that is not based on emotion. It is a process designed to get to the truth and protect the innocent,” Martin said. The process “is there for everybody,” and should not be altered to deal with one particularly heinous crime, he said.
    Wilkins based his advocacy for capital punishment on U.S. Senate testimony given by a Heritage Foundation scholar, David Muhlhausen, who concluded that the death penalty actually saves the lives of innocent people who could become victims of killers.


    Increased executions result in fewer murders, Wilkins argued, and the threat of being caught for the crime deters many people from committing it.


    Other issues of criminal punishment, including retribution for the crime, rendering the perpetrator unable to commit another crime, and rehabilitation, received little attention.
    Kable said the aspect of the death penalty that bothered him most was its violent aspect.


    “We are teaching our children that violence is good when the state carries it out,” Kable said.

    http://www2.wsls.com/news/2010/oct/1...ate-ar-574078/

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    Judge puts gavel down after career of 43 years

    After 15 years on the Virginia Supreme Court and decades more at every level of the state judiciary, Lawrence Koontz is retiring.

    Not that the veteran jurist plans to completely step off the bench when he reaches the mandatory retirement age of 70 on Feb. 1. His next post will be as a senior state Supreme Court justice, a position that will involve filling in for justices who have a conflict with a case and sitting on the writ panels that decide which cases the court will hear, Koontz said.

    So Koontz will still be sifting through arguments and rendering decisions, just as he has since being named a Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court judge for Roanoke at age 27.

    He called his decade in that position probably the most satisfying of his career because of the court's immediate effect on people's lives.

    Still, he said, "I never planned on having a judicial career. I got into it, and I got interested in it, and first thing I knew, all these years had gone by."

    Koontz's retirement, following fellow Salem jurist Steven Agee's 2008 move from the state Supreme Court to a seat on the federal 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, means that Virginia's highest court will have no members living between Richmond and Justice Cynthia Kinser's home in Lee County in far Southwest Virginia. Koontz said he doubts this will significantly alter the court's decisions, but still thinks it would be better if court members' residences reflected more of Virginia.

    "I think you have a different experience if you grow up in a rural area" as opposed to cities, said Koontz, a Roanoke native.

    Koontz is known for pushing Roanoke to move its juvenile court out of antiquated facilities in an old detention center, and for being one of the 10 judges who created Virginia's appeals court in 1985. He had a part in decisions that overturned fines against striking coal miners and protected pregnant workers from being fired, among thousands of other cases.

    But Koontz said the case that meant the most to him was a state Supreme Court decision in which he was on the losing side of a 5-2 split -- a decision that the U.S. Supreme Court overturned in a 2002 ruling that limited use of the death penalty.

    The case was Atkins v. Virginia, and the question was whether a mentally disabled man convicted of robbery and murder could be executed. Koontz said he put in long hours trying to convince the rest of the state court to block the execution, then wrote a long dissent.

    The U.S. Supreme Court cited his dissent, along with another written by his colleague Chief Justice Leroy Hassell, as a reason to hear the case. The federal court decided that evolving social standards meant the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment now applied to the execution of mentally disabled defendants. The decision meant that Atkins' sentence was commuted to life in prison, along with other defendants in similar situations across the country.

    In 2005, Atkins was one of the cases cited as the U.S. Supreme Court moved to block the execution of minors.

    Koontz said he was happy to have had a role in the larger process.

    "I have just always thought that as a society, we actually demean ourselves if we execute children," Koontz said.

    As his retirement approaches, Koontz reflected on his long career Thursday.

    Q: At the beginning of your career, you were an assistant commonwealth's attorney in Roanoke. Someone once said that as a young prosecutor, you got a certain reputation for citing something called the Griggs Rule.

    A: That sounds like my dear friend [the late] Judge Beverly Fitzpatrick ... Capt. Griggs was a captain of detectives in Roanoke city, and you would be prosecuting a case that was going south on you and you could tell the court was going to rule against you. And Capt. Griggs, he would sort of pull on your shirt sleeve and say, "Cite the Griggs Rule!"

    And I did on two occasions and Judge Fitzpatrick just looked at me and broke out laughing. Because he knew I had fallen victim -- there was no such thing, obviously, as the Griggs Rule.

    Q: Is it your sense that it was a more colorful, character-filled world in the courts of the '60s and '70s?

    A: I think it was. And I'll give you the first example that comes to my mind. In those days, we did not have the extensive discovery. ... It was more trial by ambush. You never were sure who was going to say what or what was going to happen. ... It actually made it more fun. ... I'm not sure we got better results, but it was a different way of getting to the result.

    Q: With the appeals court, what was it like to create a court?

    A: That's probably another of the most satisfying experiences I've had in my career. ... We literally started out on a blank sheet. And the 10 members of that court rapidly became not just colleagues, but we all became very good friends. Because we were all swimming in unknown waters together.

    Q: Why do you think you were selected by your colleagues to be the second chief judge of the appeals court?

    A: I'd like to sit here and tell you it was because I was the obvious choice, but I don't think that's true. It's just one of those things that sort of fell to me to do and I was glad to do it.

    Q: Was it a big shift for you to go from years in the juvenile and circuit court, where you had to make the decision, to a court where it was more of a consensus?

    A: Oh absolutely. ... Because you are accustomed as a trial judge to making the best decision you know how to make, and you make it. But on the appellate courts, you have to have a consensus. You have to work with the other members of the court.

    Q: Are there are any cases that you wish you could revisit?

    A: No, not really. There have probably been some that I got wrong, but not any that come to my mind.

    Q: I guess it would be hard to stay in the job if that bothered you.

    A: I don't think you could if you started second-guessing yourself too much.

    Q: Does the mental framework to address the job develop naturally as you do it, or is it something you have to consciously sit down and think, "I have to let this one go, it's done," and move on to what's at hand?

    A: I can be specific about that. When I first started trying cases, I soon realized that ultimately I'm going to be the one that's going to have to decide this. You begin to question, "Am I really capable?" or, "Is this something I really can do correctly?" And you gradually learn to tell yourself that at the given time, it is your responsibility. And you take that and do the best you can. And you gradually get away from questioning yourself.

    But I would hope that no judge in this commonwealth would ever think they're always right or infallible, because I know none of us can really claim that.

    Q: What are the biggest changes you’ve seen in the courts?

    One of them I’ve already mentioned, and that was discovery. … The other thing is not so much a change in the system as it is a change in population. What I mean by that is that at one time … judges knew the lawyers. They knew their families and all about them, and I think the lawyers knew the judges and their families … I wouldn’t describe it as a club but it was certainly a very familiar atmosphere. But over time, now, there’s so many lawyers that that’s just not practical, not very possible to do. So it’s gotten a little more impersonal. …

    I also think that maybe it was just a natural thing, but over my 40-some years, it has amazed me what people are willing to litigate over. Litigations seems to be the first thing people think of as opposed to some other resolution of issues.

    Q: Do you think those two things are related to some degree? That when it was a more closed circle or a network, that it perhaps excluded some people? That as that opened up, the subjects of litigation also opened up?

    A: It may be. I also think that the news media has played a role in it too. I don’t believe you can turn the television on anymore, there’s got to be at least two or three courtroom kind of programs on. And I think people just think about it, “Well, you know, that’s the way we do, we just go to court.”

    I wouldn’t want to blame any one thing. I think it’s just been a natural evolution.

    Q: You’ve served at every level of judgeship there is in Virginia. In the past you’ve said that what you enjoyed most was being a trial judge. Is that still true?

    A: I have always enjoyed the courtroom. I enjoy watching the lawyers practice our profession, particularly when they do it well. It’s very enjoyable. That said, I guess I will always feel like my roughly 10 years on the juvenile court were as rewarding to me as anything I’ve done. And I say that because I had the sense that that court was able to make a difference in people’s lives in a very immediate and concrete way. …

    The appellate court is entirely different. It’s certainly more academic in terms of interpreting the law … But when you go to the Supreme Court particularly, it’s an entirely different atmosphere. Primarily I think because of the responsibility. You know there’s no other court that’s going to be able to straighten you out if you got something wrong.and so that sense of finality makes you extremely careful. And it adds a certain amount of difficulty to that job. But that said, it is a fascinating institution.

    Q: How have all these years of being a judge, of pretty much being the authority in the room, affected your relationship with your wife and children and your family life?

    A: I’ve always been able to separate my work with the court from my family life. I’ve never taken difficult things for me home … to put those burdens on my family. I’ve felt they were my own.

    http://www.roanoke.com/news/roanoke/wb/269745

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    Push for Va death penalty expansion advances

    A renewed, scaled-back push to expand the death penalty is advancing in the Senate.

    Republican Sen. Mark Obenshain has tried for years to repeal Virginia's triggerman rule, which allows only the person who does the actual killing to receive the death penalty. When it has advanced, the measure was vetoed.

    On Thursday, a subcommittee of the Senate Courts of Justice Committee gave preliminary approval to Obenshain's bill to allow the death penalty for co-conspirators only in cases where a victim was raped and murdered. He argued that it shouldn't matter which defendant pulled the trigger.

    Opponents argue any expansion of the death penalty increases chances of executing someone who is innocent.

    Virginia has the nation's 2nd-busiest death chamber.

    (source: Associated Press)

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    Senate panel rejects 'triggerman' bill

    RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - A sharply divided Senate committee has rejected a bill to expand the death penalty.

    The Courts of Justice Committee voted 8-7 Wednesday evening to kill the legislation to redefine Virginia's triggerman rule.

    Republican Sen. Mark Obenshain of Harrisonburg has tried for years to repeal the triggerman rule, which allows only the person who does the actual killing to receive the death penalty. When it has advanced, the measure was vetoed.

    This year's version of the bill would have allowed the death penalty for co-conspirators only in cases where a victim was raped and murdered.

    http://www.wset.com/Global/story.asp?S=13959547

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    Virginia follows national trend with fewer death penalty sentences

    Death sentences across the country have fallen sharply over the past 10 years, with the 112 people sentenced to death last year the lowest total in 35 years

    NEWPORT NEWS —
    Only once in 2010 did a criminal defendant stand in a Virginia courtroom and hear a judge or jury say he must die for his crime.

    The lone death sentence — a September resentencing of Alfred Prieto in Fairfax County for two 1988 Reston murders — made last year one of the lightest years for Virginia death sentences since capital punishment was reinstituted in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a non-partisan group in Washington, D.C.

    With few Virginia death sentences handed down in recent years, the recent numbers are in line with a national trend. Death sentences across the country have fallen sharply over the past 10 years, with the 112 people sentenced to death last year representing the lowest total in 35 years.

    If that trend holds, the nationwide number of death sentences is poised to soon fall below 100 annually. Some states — not including Virginia — are actively discussing doing away with capital punishment.

    Rising jury fears about executing an innocent person is a main driver for the recent trend, experts say.

    "It's that lingering doubt about guilt that's the major concern for jurors," said Richard Dieter, the Death Penalty Information Center's executive director. "Innocence is the most important factor that's raising doubts in the public."

    Another key factor, he said, is the longer length of time it now takes to get a case from arrest to lethal injection. And because of the increased time to bring a case to closure, Dieter said, family members of crime victims are less likely to ask prosecutors to go for death — and fewer do.

    There's only one death penalty prosecution being actively sought on the Peninsula: the case of Oswaldo Elias Martinez, now 40, a deaf and mute illegal immigrant charged in the January 2005 rape, sodomy and killing of 16-year-old Brittany Binger in James City County.

    But six years after his arrest, the case still hasn't made it to trial.

    Experts are attempting to restore Martinez to competency, teaching him sign language to help him be able to assist in his own defense, before the prosecution can proceed. He's been deemed restorable "in the foreseeable future," with Circuit Judge Samuel T. Powell III calling that simply "one of those undefined phrases."

    One local death sentence, however, could come as soon as next week in Virginia Beach. Ted Vincent Carter, 26, pleaded guilty in December to the 2008 capital murder of a Virginia Beach police officer, Michael Phillips. A judge will decide Carter's fate after a two-day hearing.

    Many cases could be prosecuted as death penalty cases, but are not. Murders during drug robberies, for example, are not uncommon on the Peninsula — particularly in Newport News and Hampton — and could be charged as capital cases. But capital prosecutions are now mostly reserved for slayings of police officers, children, multiple victims or other highly sympathetic cases.

    There have been some death penalty prosecutions on the Peninsula in recent years. The Newport News Commonwealth's Attorney's Office has turned over some high-profile prosecutions to an aggressive U.S. Attorney's Office in Newport News.

    One of those cases resulted in the most recent death sentence in a Peninsula case. In 2009, a federal jury sentenced David A. Runyon to die for killing Naval officer Cory Alan Voss in a 2007 murder-for-hire plot.

    Runyon was convicted of being the hit man in the plot, hatched by Voss' wife and her boyfriend, with Voss shot to death outside an Oyster Point ATM in what was made to look like a robbery gone bad. Runyon is now on death row in Indiana, with his appeals getting started.

    But not even the feds are going for death in all eligible cases. Federal prosecutors initially gave notice they might seek death against three men accused in slaying of popular Hardee's employee Dianne Green in a restaurant robbery in 2007. Her last words before being shot in the head were: "God will forgive you."

    But last year, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder did not approve that as a federal death-penalty case, with the defendants now facing life. Holder has approved seeking the death penalty in 11 percent of eligible cases, half the rate of his predecessor, Dieter said.

    As for other local cases, Newport News Commonwealth's Attorney Howard Gwynn said his office has no death penalty prosecutions pending. Not that he's averse to bringing one, he said.

    "We just haven't any cases that we believe should be death-penalty eligible," Gwynn said. "We'll look at the background of the defendant, and the vileness of the crime. We look at the context of how the case fits in with cases where we sought death previously. And we'll gather the wishes of the victim's families. We just have not had a case (recently) where we believed people should be subjected to the ultimate punishment."

    Hampton and York County also have no death penalty cases pending.

    Last August, the Hampton Commonwealth's Attorney's Office signed off on a deal with a former death row inmate, William W. Morrisette III — first sentenced to death in 2001 for raping and killing 47-year-old Dorothy White in 1980. Morrisette, who was set for a re-sentencing hearing last year, agreed to serve a life term and drop appeals that could have dragged on for years.

    Hampton Commonwealth's Attorney Linda Curtis' last death penalty case was the 2007 prosecution of William Shanklin, accused of killing a boy in his care, 4-year-old Davion Mutts, in 2005, and burying him under some leaves. The jury gave him life.

    Experts say a growing reluctance on the part of juries to mete out death sentences — mainly arising from concerns of executing an innocent man — is the most crucial factor in the trend. Exonerations based on new DNA testing are leading to a growing perception that the justice system can get it wrong.

    In Virginia, the most stark example came in 2001, when Earl Washington Jr. came within days of being executed for a crime he didn't commit. Though the mentally challenged Washington had confessed to a murder and rape in Culpeper County, the DNA proved otherwise, and Gov. Jim Gilmore granted him clemency.

    In 2004, Texas executed Cameron Todd Willingham, a man many now believe was innocent. Willingham was given the death penalty on charges of killing his three daughters in an arson fire. But there's now a consensus among many arson experts that the fire was not set.

    Meantime, a series of U.S. Supreme Court decisions over the past decade have led to new standards on representation and mitigation in death cases. Those have added complications, costs and — together with post-conviction appeals — increased time between sentencing and execution.

    York County was home to the Daryl Atkins case, in which Atkins and another man were accused of killing Langley Airman Eric Nesbitt in 1996 after robbing him at an ATM. After years of appeals, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that it's unconstitutional to execute the mentally retarded. That was followed by a series of hearings on whether Atkins was retarded. Nearly 12 years after the crime, a York County judge made the final ruling — giving Atkins life.

    All the delays in such cases have caused many victims' families to tell prosecutors not to bother with the death penalty, Dieter said. Families often want closure more quickly than death cases can bring.

    Some families, though, keep pressing on. Nesbitt's family, for example, always wanted a jury to decide Atkins' fate, said York-Poquoson Commonwealth's Attorney Eileen Addison. But, as Dieter put it: "A lot of families are saying it's taking too long, that it's more frustration than it's worth, so don't seek it on our behalf."

    That translates into prosecutors becoming less likely to "roll the dice." "There's a hesitancy to go the final step," Dieter said. "You might have to put two prosecutors on the case for a year … All for a chancy situation where you might fall short, and that money could have been used for 10 other trials."

    "They're being more thoughtful," said Douglas Ramseur, capital defender for the state's Southeast region. "Everybody involved in the system — the prosecution, the judges, the defense attorneys — are realizing that death is different, and it requires different safeguards."

    His office is now defending three local capital cases — the Martinez case in James City, the Carter case in Virginia Beach, and Christopher Artis, accused in the 2009 killing a newspaper delivery driver in Suffolk.

    The only Peninsula native on Virginia's 10-member death row is Jerry Terrell Jackson, 29, of Williamsburg. But because of all the delays, the victim's son has asked for Jackson to be given a life term.

    Jackson, then 20, broke through a window of a Williamsburg apartment in 2001, raped Ruth Phillips, an 88-year-old widow, and smothered her to death with a pillow. He was sentenced to death in 2003. Eight years after the sentence, the case is still tied up in the courts, with a federal appeal now under way.

    And Phillips' son, Richard Phillips, 69, of Williamsburg, is fed up. "Killing a killer is justified," he said. "But if you don't carry it out, it's unfair — it's unfair to the victim's family, it's unfair to the victim, it's unfair to the jury, and it's unfair to the commonwealth. And in my mind, it's also cruel and unusual to the convicted person to drag on and on and give them false hope."

    Saying "justice delayed is justice denied," Phillips wrote to former Gov. Timothy M. Kaine in late 2009, urging him to commute Jackson's sentence to life. Kaine, then in the last month of his term, never wrote him back, he said.

    http://www.cncpunishment.com/forums/...2514#post12514

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    Cuccinelli speaks on punishing criminals

    Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli visited a high school classroom Thursday and laid out his position on issues related to the death penalty and the punishment for animal abuse versus domestic abuse.

    "Animal fighting shouldn't be above spouse fighting. It just shouldn't," Cuccinelli told students at the Hermitage Technical Center in Henrico County. "If you hit your spouse, it is a misdemeanor, but betting on chicken fighting is a felony. That struck me as being out of balance."

    The young audience — 20 students in a criminal-justice program — was attentive as Cuccinelli gave examples of misdemeanor and felony cases and talked about the Virginia criminal-justice system, some of the politics involved, and some of the consequences for committing crimes that some people don't often think about, such as losing the right to drive, own a firearm and vote.

    This was Cuccinelli's first time teaching the class as part of his office's "Virginia Rules" program, which aims to teach young people about Virginia laws, and help them stay out of trouble and become active members of their community.

    Christine Vavra, a junior who aspires to be a police officer, said the attorney general's presentation gave her a different perspective on some of the themes she's been studying and an insight on some of the politics that drive some of the laws.

    Cuccinelli explained that one of the weaknesses of the political system setting criminal penalties is "you get reactions to circumstances in particular communities that drive the bill."

    He also tackled the death penalty, noting his opposition to efforts to eliminate the "triggerman" rule, which says that only the person who pulls the trigger in a capital-murder case is eligible for the death penalty.

    "Getting rid of the triggerman rule would let anybody associated with any crime where someone dies be put to death potentially. It doesn't mean they all would be. But it opens that door," he said. "I do not think that our criminal-justice system has a problem with not putting enough people to death. Follow that? And I do not think that getting rid of the trigger rule would deter crimes from happening."

    "I do think we should have the death penalty, but I don't think we should be enthusiastic about it," he said.

    http://www2.newsadvance.com/news/201...als-ar-973870/

  9. #9
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Virginia adds new chemical to lethal injection list

    The Virginia Department of Corrections added a different chemical that can be used to execute convicted criminals, than the usual one used.

    A supply shortage of sodium thiopental forced the addition of pentobarbital to the list of lethal injection drugs, according to a news release.

    Several other states have also recently added the new chemical, due to the supply shortage.

    -----

    3:30 p.m.

    By DENA POTTER, Associated Press

    RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - Virginia's Department of Corrections says it will begin using a new drug in executions because of a nationwide shortage of the commonly used sedative sodium thiopental.

    The department announced the switch to pentobarbital on Monday. Virginia is home to the nation's second-busiest death chamber, behind Texas.

    Some of the nation's 34 death penalty states already use pentobarbital as part of the three-drug cocktail used in executions. Many states had to scramble to find another drug after the sole manufacturer of sodium thiopental announced in January it would no longer make the drug.

    Federal agents seized some states' supplies of sodium thiopental as part of a nationwide investigation into whether prisons obtained the drugs legally from England.

    There currently are no executions scheduled in Virginia.

    http://www2.wsls.com/news/2011/may/0...st-ar-1027029/

  10. #10
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Here is a bit more from my local newspaper The Virginian Pilot

    Edited:

    It is not clear whether Virginia purchased sodium thiopental from overseas, and if so whether the Drug Enforcement Administration also seized its supply.

    Department of Corrections spokesman Larry Traylor referred all questions to the Attorney General's Office, which refused to answer questions about whether Virginia had obtained sodium thiopental from overseas.

    Virginia will continue to use a three-drug cocktail, only substituting the sedative drugs, said Brian Gottstein, a spokesman for the Attorney General's Office. The first drug sedates the inmate, while a second stops his breathing and the third stops the heart.

    "The Virginia protocol for lethal injection has been litigated and has been found to be constitutionally acceptable by every court in Virginia that has looked at it ... and we are confident that the change to allow the drug pentobarbital to be substituted for sodium thiopental in the protocol will be found to be constitutionally acceptable, as well," Gottstein said.

    http://hamptonroads.com/2011/05/virg...-amid-shortage

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