Rome, 24 March 2021 – A year-long battle ended with theabolition of the death penalty. The Virginia, second only to Texas in number of executions, it became the 23rd US state to do so. The Democratic Governor Ralph Northam signed the legislation passed at the end of a long political battle, which lasted a year, during which his party comrades denounced how the death penalty was applied disproportionately to people of color, with mental handicaps and of low social background. The new Democratic majority in the Virginia House and Senate passed the bill last month.
“There is no place today for the death penalty in this community, in the South or in this country,” Governor Northam said. Since 1976, when the death penalty was reintroduced by the Supreme Court, they have been executed 113 people, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Two people were currently on death row: Anthony Juniper, convicted in 2004 of killing his ex-girlfriend, his two children and brother, e Thomas porter, convicted in 2005 for killing a policeman. Their sentences will be commuted to life sentence without the possibility of parole.
Virginia thus also becomes the first southern state of the United States to abolish the death penalty. The governor recalled the “long and complicated” history of his state, a former segregationist, in which “the racism and discrimination of our past are repeated today in our” judicial system.
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