THREAD in which I explain how Virginia actually repealed the death penalty in 2004, with a delayed enactment clause to 2021 (and why we can solve a lot MORE problems by giving public defenders adequate pay and resources). Ready? Let’s go.... 1/13

Virginia has slowly but steadily gone from the most execution-happy state in the US to achieving a de facto moratorium on the death penalty. This process appears to have started sometime in the 2000s. 2/13

Here are the number of executions by decade in Virginia:

- 1990s: 65
- 2000s: 32
- 2010s: 8

There hasn’t been a single execution in Virginia in almost 4 years now. 3/13

New death verdicts have likewise basically stopped. The last person sentenced to death in Virginia was Mark Lawlor in 2011, and his death sentence was overturned in 2019 (he was resentenced to LWOP last year). That’s 9 years without a new death sentence. In ALL of Virginia. 4/13

Is this because prosecutors stopped charging capital murder? Or a change in public opinion? Nope. I’ll give you an example: in bright blue Arlington, where I’m chief PD, the previous chief prosecutor charged capital murder every time she was permitted between 2012 & 2020. 5/13

So, what was it then? Well, looking at the data, the tide appears to have turned in the early-to-mid 2000s. Lo and behold, that is exactly when Virginia created Capital Defender's Offices (in 2004). Coincidence? Of course not. 6/13

Capital Defenders are highly-specialized public defenders who are paid more than regular PDs, given considerably more resources, and whose caseloads are much lower. All they defend are death penalty cases, and they're amazing at it, as evidenced by their track record. 7/13

Since Capital Defenders Offices were created in 2004, only about 10 defendants in Virginia have been sentenced to death. Only about 3 of the 10 were represented at trial by Capital Defenders, and of those, the death sentences of two of them were vacated or commuted. 8/13

16 yrs of Capital Defenders’ Offices. ONE upheld death sentence for a CDO client. ONE execution. Public defenders effectively ground the machinery of death to a halt in Virginia. Kudos to the Senate for the vote today, but honestly, public defenders teed it up for you. 9/13

So that’s what I meant when I said the death penalty was repealed in 2004, with delayed enactment to 2021. That one decision to establish Capital Defender's Offices set a process in motion which made today’s vote politically feasible, if not inevitable. 10/13

Leading us to the final takeaway: STOP UNDERPAYING AND UNDER-RESOURCING PUBLIC DEFENDERS. If a well-trained & resourced cap. defense unit can help end the death penalty, just think of what adequately paid public defenders can do to benefit the rest of the justice system. 11/13

Virginia is still waging the war on drugs, after all. And putting kids in adult prisons. And criminalizing mental illness. And devaluing Black lives & Black communities. Public defenders are on the front-lines of the fight to end all of those practices. 12/13

However, this yr @JusticeFwdVa had a bill to require pay parity btwn public defenders & prosecutors—and we couldn’t even find a patron! Come on, folks. This is how to make the change you said you wanted. It's time to support adequate funding/pay parity for public defenders 13/13

I just realized I forgot to @ Chris Cuomo, for his weird comments last week about paid lawyers. Here you are, @ChrisCuomo . Show some respect in the future, big guy