State senators passed a bill Thursday to bar the death penalty for the seriously mentally ill.
The same bill was tabled last year to be studied by the Virginia State Crime Commission. But the commission didn’t address it, and the legislation sponsored by Sen. Barbara Favola, D-Arlington, now heads to the House of Delegates after passing the Senate 23-17.
Favola and supporters said Senate Bill 1137 would close a gap in state law to protect someone with severe mental illness from capital punishment.
“This is providing a vehicle for us to administer justice in a way that’s humane and, I would say, in a way that reflects the values of Virginians,” Favola said in the Senate.
Republicans who opposed the bill said jurors already hear evidence of substantial mental illness and make decisions on whether someone convicted of a capital offense meets the criteria for the death penalty. Favola’s bill is a step toward ending the death penalty in Virginia, they said.
“What this does is it takes discretion away from the jury,” said Sen. Mark Obenshain, R-Rockingham. “I know that there is a robust debate in Virginia and across the country about capital punishment. ... If you want to do away with capital punishment, let’s just debate the ultimate issue and decide whether we’re going to continue to have capital punishment in Virginia or not.”
Virginia has executed 113 people since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, second only to Texas, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
No jury has imposed a death sentence in Virginia since 2011. There are currently only three people on death row — the lowest number since the 1970s — and one has been granted a new hearing, said Sen. Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax.
“This is a practice that hardly ever occurs anymore,” he said. “This bill is going to have a minor impact ... you’re talking about maybe one case in a decade that this bill would actually impact.”
Virginia’s views on the death penalty are changing, he said.
“The reality is we have a broken mental health system in this country,” he said. “We have a broken mental health system in this state. We don’t give it enough money.”
Sen. Dick Saslaw, D-Fairfax, one of the most vociferous supporters of the death penalty in the legislature — who voted to bring it back in 1976 and helped write Virginia law on when capital punishment can be used — supported Favola’s bill.
He told Republicans they should feel safe supporting the bill and that they could tell their constituents that Saslaw — “one of the bigger supporters of capital punishment” — supported it as well.
