Northam signs legislation abolishing the death penalty

Northam (right) visits the execution chamber at the Greensville Correctional Center.

Virginia Gov. Governor Ralph Northam signed legislation March 23 abolishing the death penalty. 

Virginia is the 23rd state, and the first in the South, to ban executions. 

The electric chair at the Virginia Penitentiary in Richmond was designed and installed by the Adams Electric Co. of Trenton, N.J. [Library of Virginia]

Northam signed bills sponsored by Sen. Scott Surovell (Mount Vernon) and Del. Mike Mullin (Newport News) during a ceremony outside the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarrat, Va. Since that facility’s execution chamber opened in 1991, 102 people have been executed, the most recent one in 2017. 

Over its 400-year history, Virginia has executed more than 1,300 people, which is more than any other state. 

“The death penalty system is fundamentally flawed. It is inequitable, ineffective, and it has no place in this commonwealth or this country.” Northam said. 

Noting that Black defendants have been disproportionately sentenced to death, Northam said, “Abolishing this inhumane practice is the moral thing to do”

Studies have shown that a defendant is more than three times as likely to be sentenced to death if the victim of a crime is White, than if the victim is Black. In the 20th century, 296 of the 377 defendants that Virginia executed for murder were Black. Of the 113 individuals who have been executed in Virginia since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, 52 were Black.

The legislation signed by Northam also converts the sentences of the two individuals currently on death row in Virginia to life in prison without parole.