In a meeting yesterday with the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s editorial board, Kaine voiced concerns that lawmakers confronted with the tough budget he’s crafting for the next two fiscal years will shrink from some of the sacrifices it will require to keep the state fiscally sound in a tough economy.

After the execution of John Allen Muhammad, The Times-Dispatch’s Frank Green reported that “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.“ The news follows a trend that has seen fewer death sentences during the past several years. Experts attribute the news to various factors, of which the certainty of life without parole may be pre-eminent. Prisoners slated for execution remain on Death Row. Larry Bill Elliott went to the electric chair Tuesday night.

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.

Elliott Gov. Timothy M. Kaine has delayed from Oct. 5 to Nov. 17 the execution of a former Army intelligence officer from Maryland in the 2001 murders of a Dale City couple. Kaine said he needs more time to study the man’s clemency petition. Larry Bill Elliott, 59, was convicted of capital murder in the slaying of Dana Thrall, 25, and of first-degree murder in the killing of Robert Finch, 30. Both were shot in their town house in January 2001.

A federal jury is recommending the death penalty for a West Virginia man convicted of killing a sailor in a murder-for-hire plot.

Condemned killer Paul Warner Powell won another reprieve yesterday, this time from the U.S. Supreme Court, which stayed his execution set for tonight in Virginia’s electric chair. Powell, 31, was sentenced to die for the Jan. 29, 1999, capital murder of Stacie Lynn Reed, 16, in her Manassas-area home. After he stabbed Stacie to death, Powell raped and attempted to kill her 14-year-old sister, Kristie, and left her for dead.

Paul Warner Powell has chosen to die in the electric chair if he is executed as scheduled July 14 for the 1999 slaying of a 16-year-old girl. Condemned inmates in Virginia have been given a choice between electrocution and lethal injection since Jan. 1, 1995. Since then, 75 killers have been executed by injection and four have been electrocuted.

As expected, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine yesterday vetoed five death-penalty bills and a bill that would allow holders of concealed weapons permits to carry guns into bars and restaurants. Kaine may have trouble sustaining his veto of a couple of the death-penalty measures when lawmakers reconvene in Richmond on April 8. Two of the bills would extend eligibility for the death penalty to murderers of auxiliary police officers. Another would extend eligibility for the penalty to murderers of fire marshals.

The Virginia Senate could vote today on expanding the death penalty.

A long-running case that reshaped the death penalty in the U.S. and outlived the judge will be argued before the Virginia Supreme Court today. More than a decade after Daryl Renard Atkins left a young airman riddled with bullets at a dark, rural crossroads in York County, the killer’s fate is still uncertain.

Executions decreased across the United States for the third straight year, but Texas, Virginia and the South again led the country. This year, 37 killers have been put to death in the U.S.; no executions are set for the rest of the year. Of the total, 18 were executed in Texas and four in Virginia. Just two people were executed outside the South, according to a report being released today by the Death Penalty Information Center.