It has been less than a year since Virginia abolished the death penalty, and the General Assembly has already debated about whether it should be reinstated in certain cases.
On a 9-6 party-line vote, the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday voted down Republican State Sen. Bill DeSteph’s bill that would bring the death penalty back as an option for punishment in cases where a police officer is murdered.
“This bill basically says if you kill a police officer, the death sentence is back on the table,” DeSteph told a Senate subcommittee.
DeSteph referred to the recent incident at the Bridgewater College campus, where two officers, John Painter and J.J. Jefferson, were killed during a confrontation with a former student.
The 27-year-old suspect was arrested shortly after the shooting.
“Last week we lost two of our officers,” DeSteph said. “These are the individuals who put their life at risk for folks they don’t even know every single day.”
The bill had the backing of Virginia’s new attorney general, Jason Miyares.
“There must be the ultimate punishment for the intentional murder of a police officer,” Nicole Wittmann, a deputy attorney general with Miyares’ office, told the committee. “We wholeheartedly believe that setting the possible sentence at a maximum would help to dissuade people.”
Jeff Caruso, the founding director of the Virginia Catholic Conference, spoke against it.
“We have tremendous respect and honor for our law enforcement, but we do not think that the death penalty is the answer,” Caruso told the subcommittee.
In March of last year, then-Gov. Ralph Northam signed legislation making Virginia the 23rd state to abolish the death penalty — a dramatic shift for the commonwealth, which had the second-highest number of executions in the U.S.
That was the culmination of a yearslong battle by Democrats who argued the death penalty has been applied disproportionately to people of color, the mentally ill and the poor. Republicans argued that the death penalty should remain a sentencing option for especially heinous crimes and to bring justice to victims and their families.
