MCN/USA TODAY NETWORK
March 26, 2021
“Justice and punishment are not always the same thing, that
is too clearly evident in 400 years of the death penalty in Virginia,” Gov.
Ralph Northam said during remarks ahead of signing the legislation, saying that
it is both the right and the moral thing to do.
While Virginia has now become the first state of the former
Confederacy to ban the death penalty, it is the 23rd state overall, following
Colorado last year.
A total of 1,390 people have been put to death in Virginia,
with the first documented execution being a Spanish spy in the Jamestown colony
in 1608, according to NBC News. Since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the
death penalty in 1976, Virginia has executed 113 people, second only to Texas.
However, Virginia has only two men on death row and not a single jury in
Virginia has imposed a death sentence since 2011.
Virginia is one of four commonwealths in the United States—the
other three are Massachusetts, Kentucky and Pennsylvania. What is the
difference between a state and a commonwealth? Nothing, according
Merriam-Webster Dictionary the term commonwealth was preferred over
state by a number of political writers in the years leading up to 1780.
Regardless of their designation, the four commonwealths seem
to be in step when it comes to disdain for capital punishment.
The last public execution in the United States was carried out
in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. On August 14, 1936, it was reported that
nearly 20,000 people crowded around the gallows in Owensboro to witness the
execution of Rainey Bethea. He was convicted of the rape and murder of a
70-year-old woman.
The murder was committed on
June 7, 1936. Bethea pleaded guilty, was sentenced and his appeals were
disposed of by August 5, 1936. He was executed a little more than a week later.
The Commonwealth was portrayed in a
less than favorable light by the throng of media that descended on Owensboro
for the hanging. The Kentucky legislature, embarrassed by the unfavorable
attention, moved to abolish public executions.
Today in Kentucky the death
penalty is rarely imposed and only one person has been executed in the
commonwealth in the 21st century.
The last executions in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts
were gangsters Philip Belino and Edward Gertson on May 9, 1947.
After going 35 years without an execution, Massachusetts
voters approved, by a whopping majority, a constitutional amendment providing
that no constitutional provision shall be construed as prohibiting the death
penalty.
Nevertheless, the commonwealth’s capital punishment statute
was struck down in 1984 as a violation of due process.
The state legislature passed a statute to reinstate capital punishment in 1986
but it was vetoed by then-governor Michael Dukakis, who became the Democratic
nominee for president in 1988.
Since 1999, the governors of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
have signed approximately 205 execution warrants without a single execution,
according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.
There have been three executions in Pennsylvania since 1978.
All three—Keith Zettlemoyer and Leon Moser in 1995; and Gary Heidnik in
1999—waived their appeal rights and volunteered to be executed.
Three-hundred forty-eight men
and two women were executed in the state's electric chair between 1915 and
April 2, 1962, when Elmo Smith was executed for the rape and murder of a young girl.
Smith was also the last person involuntarily executed in Pennsylvania.
The current governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,
Tom Wolf, has imposed a moratorium on executions. Although there are
approximately 142 inmates on death row, don’t expect an execution in
Pennsylvania any time soon.
(Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett,
Kelly & George P.C. His book The Executioner’s Toll, 2010 was released by
McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com
and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino)
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