University Law Professor Brandon Garrett has released a study attributing the declining use of the death penalty in Virginia to improved lawyering.
After noticing the decline of the death penalty and the lack of knowledge regarding its extent, Garrett compiled evidence from capital trials and discovered a stark decline in the last two decades.
Though Virginia ranks third nationally in the number of prisoners executed since 1970, there have been no new death sentences for four years. Additionally, only 11 of the 21 capital cases since 2005 have received life sentences.
Garrett attributed the decline to the creation of regional capital defense resource centers, teams of specialist capital defense lawyers and investigators, longer sentencing phases and increased use of defense and expert witnesses.
Teams of specialists in death penalty cases often provide the defendant with attention and resources not provided to defendants of other criminal cases, Garrett said, which can be critical for exposing background and mental health issues which may affect sentencing.
“Courts are more concerned with mental health issues and people may just have more of an understanding of how things like mental disability, psychosis and fetal alcohol syndrome can be important in these cases,” Garrett said. “[Jurors] are much more understanding of how mental health can make people do things others wouldn’t.”
This renewed attention to mental health and waning public support for the death penalty may be shaping more lenient juries.
Despite its recent decline in use, the death penalty still serves an important role in plea bargaining. Garrett said prosecutors may insist on having this tool available even if it is rarely or never imposed.
Garrett further uncovered in the last decade only seven counties in Virginia imposed death sentences, with nine of the 11 sentences in larger jurisdictions.
“There might be real issues with a death penalty that is imposed so rarely and arbitrarily in so few places,” Garrett said. “Whether someone faces the death penalty doesn’t just rest on what state they committed murder in, but also what city and what county.”
The Supreme Court has intervened in past cases where application of the death penalty was deemed arbitrary. Virginia may be indicative of the future of the death penalty in America, Garrett said.
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