A 23rd state ends capital punishment

Virginia's Governor Ralph Northam signed a bill yesterday that abolishes the death penalty in his state. 

Diligent local activists and a fortunate conjunctions of political forces made this long sought change possible. 

Last summer’s reckoning with racial inequity, sparked by the killing of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis, altered and intensified the public conversation about criminal justice, several Democrats said.

Northam, facing the last year of his term, considered statistics showing Black Virginians are many times more likely to face the death penalty and decided it was time to act, he said in an interview. Several lawmakers said Northam’s declaration of support for abolishing capital punishment made the issue a priority.

With the governor’s mansion and all 100 seats in the House of Delegates on the ballot this fall, there are no guarantees that Democrats will maintain their grip on power into next year. They had to act now or risk losing the opportunity.

Democrats down the road in D.C. should pay attention -- thanks to citizen activism, they have a conjunction of forces in Congress that could enable them to seize the time and strengthen democracy and justice in many arenas -- if only they'll act decisively.

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Duke University Law professor Brandon Garrett provides a short, comprehensive analysis of how death penalty opponents got the change done in Virginia and will eventually across the country. The death penalty is racist, applied unfairly by contemporary standards which good lawyering can reveal, expensive, and to many, simply repugnant. We no longer have to kill people identified as offenders in order to feel we are a just society.