MANGINO: Commonwealths unite in disdain for capital punishment By Matthew T. Mangino
This week, the Commonwealth of Virginia officially abolished the death penalty, making it the first Southern state to ban capital punishment.
“Justice and punishment are not always the same thing, that is too clearly evident in 400 years of the death penalty in Virginia,” Gov. Ralph Northam said during remarks ahead of signing the legislation, saying that it is both the right and the moral thing to do.
While Virginia has now become the first state of the former Confederacy to ban the death penalty, it is the 23rd state overall, following Colorado last year.
MANGINO: Virginia abolishes death penalty, joining 22 other states
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As a result of the police misconduct the Supreme Court provided a remedy - the exclusion of illegally obtained evidence from admission in a criminal prosecution - resulting in a dismissal of the charges.
Forty-seven years before Mapp, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that evidence collected in federal prosecutions that violated the Fourth Amendment ban against illegal search and seizures would be excluded from trial.
The rationale behind the exclusionary rule was to deter police misconduct.
Many Supreme Court observers suggested that the Mapp decision would inundate courts with challenges and the guilty would go free in droves. Over the last 60 years, the Supreme Court has whittled away at the exclusionary rule.