The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/category/capital-punishment/)
Virginia’s new Democratic majority, in full control of the General Assembly for a second year, pushed the repeal effort, arguing that the death penalty has been applied disproportionately to people of color, the mentally ill and the indigent.
Sworn accounts by executioners raise questions about whether officials misled courts to ensure the executions scheduled from July to mid-January were done before death penalty opponent Joe Biden became president.
In the next few days, Virginia will be the 11th state to abolish capital punishment since 2007. That’s a demarcation point for the modern abolition movement―and it should be a signal for other states to take similar steps, writes Sarah Craft, who directs anti-death penalty advocacy for Equal Justice USA.
Joe Biden, the first sitting U.S. president to openly oppose the death penalty, has discussed the possibility of instructing the Department of Justice to stop scheduling new executions, but death penalty opponents want him to go much further.
In a letter sent to the president Monday, the coalition called capital punishment “an assault on human dignity and an affront to American values.”
Virginia Commonwealth’s Attorneys James Hingeley and Gregory Underwood say they will no longer request the death penalty and join nine other prosecutors in an appeal to lawmakers to remove capital punishment from state statutes.
Corey Johnson was put to death for a killing spree in a drug racket. The Justice Department has asked the Supreme Court to allow another execution on Friday.
A panel of federal judges has ordered that Dustin Higgs, 48, convicted in a Maryland triple murder in 1996, be executed as scheduled on Friday. A defense attorney complains of “super-spreader executions” during the pandemic.
The federal government executed Lisa Montgomery on Wednesday after the Supreme Court vacated a delay by a federal appeals court. She was the first woman put to death by federal authorities in nearly 70 years.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), incoming chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) criticized the Trump administration for planning three executions this week.