KEEP THE DEATH PENALTY IN VIRGINIA OR LIFE WITHOUT PAROLE WILL GO NEXT

Virginia is planning to abolish the death penalty. We the members are truly well aware that if they end capital punishment, life without parole will be their next target. Attorney Hans Bader will explain more in this column.

On this date, January 16, 2013, a double Prison Killer, Robert Gleason Jr. was executed by the electric chair in Virginia.

Virginia Should Keep Death Penalty or Life Without Parole Will Go Next

By Hans Bader | January 14, 2021 | 3:52pm EST

Virginia's governor and the head of a key legislative subcommittee are backing legislation to abolish the death penalty in Virginia and overturn existing death sentences.

In theory, the death penalty could save lives by deterring people from committing murder. Several studies found that it deters killings of innocent people. As the Associated Press noted in 2007, "Each execution deters an average of 18 murders, according to a 2003 nationwide study by professors at Emory University. (Other studies have estimated the deterred murders per execution at three, five, and 14)."

The death penalty can also prevent additional murders by prisoners serving life sentences. Being executed is the only thing that stops some murderers from killing again. Consider the case of Robert Gleason. He had been sentenced to life in prison without parole for murder. He beat his cellmate to death while in Wallens Ridge State Prison. Afterwards, while awaiting trial on that charge at Red Onion State Prison, he murdered another inmate. He then declared that he would continue killing until the state executed him. He was sentenced to death and moved to Sussex I State Prison, home of death row. Any additional killings became impossible when he was executed in January 2013.

But in practice, there just aren't going to be many executions in contemporary Virginia, so any deterrent effect of retaining the death penalty will be limited. As the Richmond Times-Dispatch notes, "no one has been sentenced to death in Virginia since 2011, or executed since 2017. And the state’s death row, which once hovered around 50, is now down to two men, who will have their sentences changed to life in prison without the possibility of parole if the bill becomes law."

Executions have become exceedingly rare in recent years in Virginia, as a growing minority of Virginians have become skeptical of the death penalty. Juries are unlikely to impose the death penalty in all but the most extreme cases, if even a few jurors have misgivings. As Wikipedia notes, in Virginia, "When the prosecution seeks the death penalty, the sentence is decided by the jury and must be unanimous. In case of a hung jury during the penalty phase of the trial, a life sentence is issued, even if a single juror opposed death (there is no retrial)."

Still, I strongly oppose abolishing the death penalty because once it is abolished, many of its critics will move on to attacking life sentences without parole, whose abolition would gravely harm public safety.

  

The death penalty is a critical buffer zone around life without parole, helping insulate it from challenge. As long as the death penalty was regularly carried out, death penalty opponents would point to life without parole as a better alternative. But after its frequency waned, some death penalty opponents in the U.S. began attacking life without parole as well.

Similarly, after the death penalty was abolished in Europe, many activists who had once campaigned against the death penalty shifted to attacking life without parole (critics of life without parole call it a "hidden death sentence.") The result was that courts began to strike down life without parole -- such as when a European Court in 2013 overturned Britain's practice of imposing life without parole on the worst murderers who killed again after being released from prison for a prior murder. The court claimed life without parole is "inhuman and degrading" and thus violated the EU Charter.

As Ed Morrissey notes, "Life without parole developed — at least in the U.S. — as a means to give the state an option to the death penalty."

But as soon as the death penalty is abolished, life without parole is likely to come under assault. There is already legislation pending in Virginia that would lower the age for geriatric release to age 50 for many inmates, effectively allowing even some murderers serving life "without parole" to get parole in all but name. It passed the state Senate last year on a 21-to-19 vote, and is now sitting in the House of Delegates.

Soon after the Supreme Court declared the death penalty unconstitutional for 16 and 17-year-olds, it declared life without parole unconstitutional for all but the worst teenage killers. Those rulings contributed to the Virginia legislature making all teenage criminals -- even serial killers -- eligible for parole after at most 20 years (even though about 10% of all murders have historically been committed by juveniles, and once released, juvenile murderers often commit more violent crimes, including more murders).

By releasing violent criminals earlier, these expansions of parole will result in more killings of innocent people. Studies show that longer prison sentences deter crimes from being committed, saving innocent lives. For example, California's violent crime rate fell due to the passage of California’s Proposition 8, which increased sentences for repeat offenders who commit murder, rape, and robbery.

Hans Bader practices law in Washington, D.C. After studying economics and history at the University of Virginia and law at Harvard, he practiced civil-rights, international-trade, and constitutional law. He also once worked in the Education Department.

INTERNET SOURCE: https://cnsnews.com/commentary/hans-bader/virginia-should-keep-death-penalty-or-life-without-parole-will-go-next

OTHER LINKS BY THE AUHOR:

https://www.baconsrebellion.com/wp/is-abolition-of-life-without-parole-next/

https://www.baconsrebellion.com/wp/dems-seek-to-abolish-virginia-death-penalty/

 

The dead cannot cry out for justice. It is a duty of the living to do so for them. - Lois McMaster Bujold

[PHOTO SOURCE: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/lois_mcmaster_bujold_389472]

OTHER LINKS:

Please contact those in Virginia Senate:

Delegate Charniele Herring (House Majority Leader) https://virginiageneralassembly.gov/house/members/members.php?id=H0208

Delegate Todd Gilbert (House Minority Leader) https://virginiageneralassembly.gov/house/members/members.php?id=H0181

Senator Richard Saslaw (Senate Majority Leader) https://apps.senate.virginia.gov/Senator/memberpage.php?id=S32

Senator Thomas Norment (Senate Minority Leader) https://apps.senate.virginia.gov/Senator/memberpage.php?id=S26

Look at those murderers who were executed in the State:

1. On this date, 6 July 2000, Michael Clagett was executed by the electric chair for the mass murder of 4 people at the Witchduck Inn in Virginia Beach on 30 June 1994. He was executed six years after the murder and also, five years after being sentenced to death. Virginia is one of the States in America that executes the death row inmates at least, seven years after the murders.

http://soldierexecutionerprolifer2008.blogspot.com/2013/07/michael-david-clagett-executed-in.html

2. Brandon Wayne Hedrick (February 23, 1979 – July 20, 2006) was a convicted murderer who was executed by electric chair by the U.S. state of Virginia. He was convicted of the 1997 murder of 23-year-old Lisa Crider, who was kidnapped, robbed, raped, and shot in the face. He was the first person electrocuted in Virginia since 2003, when Earl Bramblett was executed for rape and murder.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Hedrick

3. On this date, July 27, 2006, Michael William Lenz was executed by lethal injection in Virginia for the murder of his inmate, Brent Henry Parker on January 16, 2000. 

http://soldierexecutionerprolifer2008.blogspot.com/2013/07/prison-killer-executed-michael-william.html

4. On this date, March 18, 2010, Paul Warner Powell, was executed by the electric chair in Virginia. He was put to death for the murder of Stacie Reed on January 29, 1999.

http://soldierexecutionerprolifer2008.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-old-sparky-paul-warner-powell.html

5. Christopher Scott Emmett was executed by lethal injection in Virginia on July 24, 2008. He murdered John F. Langley on April 27, 2001. Notice that he only spent seven years on death row after being sentenced to death on November 2, 2001! He is just like the D.C Sniper and Michael William Lenz, who also spent about 7 years on Death Row before being terminated from the face of the earth.

http://soldierexecutionerprolifer2008.blogspot.com/2014/07/7-years-on-virginia-death-row.html

6. John Allen Muhammad (December 31, 1960 - November 10, 2009) was a convicted murderer from the United States. He, along with his seventeen-year-old partner, Lee Boyd Malvo, carried out the 2002 Beltway sniper attacks, killing at least 10 people. Muhammad and Malvo were arrested in connection with the attacks on October 24, 2002, following tips from alert citizens.

http://soldierexecutionerprolifer2008.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-dc-sniper-john-allen-muhammad.html

7. Robert Gleason Jr was serving life in prison for the 2007 fatal shooting of Michael Kent Jamerson in Amherst County. The murder was committed to cover up his involvement in a drug gang. In 2009, he became frustrated with prison officials because they refused to move out his new, mentally disturbed cell mate. Gleason hog-tied, beat and strangled 63-year-old Harvey Watson Jr. who was also serving time for murder. Gleason pled guilty. Both in court and in media interviews, Gleason vowed to continue killing if not given the death penalty. While awaiting sentencing at a highly secure prison for the state's most dangerous inmates, Gleason strangled 26-year-old Aaron Cooper through wire fencing that separated their individual cages in a recreation yard in 2010. Cooper was serving a 34 year sentence for Robbery. Gleason again pled guilty, waived appeals, and got his wish after choosing the electric chair over lethal injection.

http://soldierexecutionerprolifer2008.blogspot.com/2014/01/robert-gleason-jr-murdered-1-outside.html

8. Ricky Javon Gray (March 9, 1977–January 18, 2017). The 2006 Richmond spree murders took place during a seven-day period in January 2006 in and around Richmond, Virginia, United States; seven people, four members of the Harvey family and three members of the Baskerville-Tucker family, were killed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Richmond_spree_murders

9. William Charles Morva (February 9, 1982 – July 6, 2017) was an American-Hungarian criminal convicted of the two 2006 shooting deaths of Sheriff's Deputy Corporal Eric Sutphin and hospital security guard Derrick McFarland in the town of Blacksburg, Virginia. The shooting deaths occurred near the university campus of Virginia Tech while he awaited trial for attempted armed robbery.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Morva

            There are many others, we can name that are here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_executed_in_Virginia

            If you notice how dangerous these killers are, some of them have already murdered behind bars. Letting them live have consequences, they will always have an opportunity to kill again. It is good that they are dead and no longer able to reoffend.

Goodbye to Death Penalty means goodbye to LWOP:

        Take the May 31, 2019 Virginia Beach Mass Shooting for example, the shooter, DeWayne Craddock killed 12 people in a Virginia Beach municipal building before being shot dead by police. Had Craddock survived, the shooting, we want him to be sentenced to death like Dylann Roof too. As Mike Farrell mention above, even Death Penalty abolitionist will also object to Craddock facing execution, no matter how guilty he is.

New York Is Turning Herself Into A Criminal’s Dream State By Andrew Bieszad

http://shoebat.com/2020/01/02/new-york-is-turning-herself-into-a-criminals-dream-state/

Here are several examples of murderers being paroled from prison in Virginia:

Victim’s family unhappy about parole approval for 1988 killer of Lynchburg girl

https://www.facebook.com/VictimsFamiliesForTheDeathPenalty/posts/3364141127041163

https://www.wdbj7.com/2020/12/08/victims-family-unhappy-about-parole-approval-for-1988-killer-of-lynchburg-girl/

Lynchburg family calls release of 15-year-old daughter’s killer, after 32 years, ‘nonsense’

https://www.facebook.com/VictimsFamiliesForTheDeathPenalty/posts/3364142450374364

https://www.wsls.com/news/local/2020/12/08/lynchburg-family-calls-release-of-15-year-old-daughters-killer-after-32-years-nonsense/

Report: Convicted murderers paroled in Virginia without even contacting their victims’ families

https://www.facebook.com/VictimsFamiliesForTheDeathPenalty/posts/3105600626228549

https://www.facebook.com/law.enforcement.today/posts/10163342347905244

https://www.lawenforcementtoday.com/convicted-murderers-paroled-in-virginia-without-contacting-victims-families/

            Anti-Prison Groups like The Sentencing Project and the Bail Project and even the ACLU are behind all these. They are already doing it everywhere around the country.

            We find it suspicious that they use COVID-19 as an excuse not to carry out an execution but seems not to have a problem releasing criminals for fear of COVID-19 spreading in public.

One recent example is the case of Ibrahim E. Bouaichi

Ibrahim E. Bouaichi is charged with the murder of Karla Dominguez, and was arrested last year after Dominguez accused him of sexually assaulting her in Alexandria, Va.

The incident in Karla Dominguez’s apartment last October was violent, and it was not consensual, she testified in Alexandria District Court in December. The man she accused was indicted on charges including rape, strangulation and abduction and jailed without bond in Alexandria.

Then the coronavirus pandemic hit. Ibrahim E. Bouaichi’s lawyers argued that the virus was a danger to both inmates and their attorneys, and that Bouaichi should be freed awaiting trial. On April 9, over the objections of an Alexandria prosecutor, Circuit Court Judge Nolan Dawkins released Bouaichi on $25,000 bond, with the condition that he only leave his Maryland home to meet with his lawyers or pretrial services officials.

On July 29, Alexandria police say, Bouaichi, 33, returned to Alexandria and shot and killed Dominguez outside her apartment in the city’s West End.

A man accused of murdering an Alexandria woman, who had accused him of sexually assaulting her last fall, died Saturday (August 8, 2020) from a self-inflicted gunshot wound that occurred as police tried to arrest him again on Wednesday. The man’s family issued a statement Saturday night saying they were grieving the loss of both lives.

INTERNET SOURCE: https://soldierexecutionerprolifer2008.blogspot.com/2020/08/virginia-rape-suspect-ibrahim-bouaichi.html

SIMILAR LINKS:

http://victimsfamiliesforthedeathpenalty.blogspot.com/2019/11/open-letter-to-rachel-sutphin-please.html