Va. goes 20 months without a death verdict from a jury

RICHMOND, Va. -- Attention was drawn to Virginia this week with the execution of John Allen Muhammad, the state's 104th person to be executed since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume in 1976.

Officials are preparing for another execution next week, but little noticed amid the recent activity in the state's death chamber is that there has not been a death verdict from a jury in the state since March 2008.

That last such verdict was for former Chesterfield County resident William Morva, who killed two men during a 2006 jail escape in Montgomery County.

The 20-month period apparently is the longest stretch without a death sentence since capital punishment was restored in Virginia, said David Bruck of the Washington and Lee University School of Law.

The development is consistent with national trends. According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, there were 115 death sentences in the U.S. in 2007, down from 326 in 1995. The number of murders in the U.S. also has dropped steeply since the mid-1990s.

The Virginia Supreme Court does not keep track of the number of death sentences sought here each year or the outcomes of capital-murder trials.

Scott Sundby, also a professor of law at Washington and Lee, believes a number of factors are involved and that the development is significant.

"That 20-month hiatus actually comes on the heels of a rather dramatic decline that has been going on really for over a decade now in Virginia," he said. "If you look at the number of death sentences imposed, it's been going down steadily."

Sundby said the factors include a growing realization by jurors that a life sentence in Virginia now means true life -- an often acceptable alternative to a death sentence. Changes in state law effective in 1995 meant life sentences now are true life sentences with no parole.

Another development he believes plays a role is the rising costs faced by officials in winning death sentences in trial courts and then defending them in appeals courts.

Defense lawyers also now are far better trained and equipped to do their job than they were just 10 years ago, he said. Also, Sundby contends, "the public's desire for capital punishment has started to dwindle."

Gallup's most recent polling shows 65 percent of the American public supports the death penalty. However, a May 2006 poll found that if given a choice between death and a true life sentence, 47 percent supported death and 48 percent life imprisonment.

Dudley Sharp a death-penalty expert in Texas, said that nationally there is no evidence jurors are less likely to impose death sentences and that the drop in death sentences can be explained largely by the drop in murders.

Also contributing, Sharp said, are U.S. Supreme Court decisions during the past decade barring death for those who kill under the age of 18 or for those who have been found to be mentally retarded. And more violent offenders, including murderers, are serving long terms in prison, he said.

Sharp said that in other parts of the country, prosecutors have been reluctant to seek death penalties because appeals courts often prevent the sentences from being carried out.

Muhammad's execution coincided with news stories in other states, such as California -- with 678 death-row inmates and 13 executions since 1976 -- and Pennsylvania -- with 226 on death row and three executions -- about the moribund status of capital punishment there.

"However," Sharp said, "the drop in death sentences appear to be greater than can be explained by just those reasons."

Contact Frank Green at (804) 649-6340 or .