Virginia Abolishes Death Penalty: Now, Let’s Abolish Genocide
EIRNS
A September 1992 march against the death penalty—from Virginia’s capital Richmond to Washington, D.C., led by Lyndon LaRouche’s vice-presidential running mate Rev. James Bevel—is met and addressed by LaRouche associate Michael Billington (center, necktie), on his way to a Virginia prison to serve a long sentence from the political prosecutions of LaRouche’s movement.
April 17—The Virginia General Assembly and the state’s Governor made Virginia the first state of the old Confederacy to abolish the death penalty, in a signing ceremony March 24 at the Greensville Correctional Center near Jarratt, Virginia, where all the state’s executions had been carried out since 1991. The first execution in Virginia was carried out at Jamestown Colony in 1608 of a man convicted of spying for Spain, and the Commonwealth has executed more people than any other U.S. state. Since 1976, it has trailed only Texas in the number of executions.