Why am I always the one who has to write letters like this challenging the latest liberal legislative twist? The Democrat governor and the liberals now in charge in Richmond want to abolish capital punishment. The public should look beyond their righteous rhetoric and ask instead whose interests they really are serving.
The bill's Senate sponsor Scott Surovell inadvertently conceded that the bill lacks public support by using as a reason to support the bill the finding that 43% of prospective jurors are disallowed from death penalty cases because their opposition is a disqualification. Since jurors are drawn from voter rolls and other public sources, Sen. Surovell inadvertently admits that 57% of the Virginia public supports the death penalty, so why is he carrying water for the minority which doesn't?
The principal reason for having a death penalty is that it is proportionate justice for serious crimes. Do death penalty opponents seriously believe that execution was not the appropriate punishment for Dylann Roof, whom GQ termed "a most American terrorist" for gunning down participants in a prayer group at an African American church www.gq.com/story/dylann-roof-making-of-an-american-terrorist ? Do they doubt his guilt? How about James Alex Fields Jr. who killed Heather Heyer with his vehicle at the Charlottesville riots in August 2017? Fields jerked Charlottesville's liberal prosecutor around and required a full trial, resulting in a sentence of life plus 419 years (does anyone expect him to serve that long?), but in his federal trial, where one of the charges carried the death penalty, Fields pled guilty to all the ones which didn't https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlottesville_car_attack#Investigation_and_prosecution, demonstrating the death penalty's ability to exact justice by making perpetrators own up to their crimes.
Whose interests are these death penalty opponents promoting in Richmond -- not the 57% which support the death penalty? Maybe then the criminal defense bar and potential perpetrators of the most serious crimes?
Dino Drudi
Alexandria