On The Front Lines

Rutherford Institute Calls for Virginia Moratorium on the Death Penalty!

The Rutherford Institute Joins with ACLU to Release Death Penalty Report and Call for Virginia Moratorium

RICHMOND -- According to a report released today by The Rutherford Institute and the American Civil Liberties Union on the state of the death penalty in Virginia, prosecutorial misconduct and incompetent legal counsel, combined with arbitrary restrictions on the presentation of evidence as well as efforts to correct trial error, form a criminal justice system that convicts innocent people and deprives others of a fair hearing. In fact, the report concludes that Virginia's system is so flawed with regards to the death penalty that the public cannot be reasonably confident of the condemned individual's guilt. The report, "Broken Justice: The Death Penalty in Virginia," is available online by clicking here.

The report, which was authored by Rachel King, staff attorney for the ACLU's Capital Punishment Project, has been endorsed by a range of organizations, including the Virginia NAACP and the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy. "Support for capital punishment is based on the belief that it's applied rationally and fairly and is reserved for the worst of the worst offenders," said King. "But we found example after example where this was simply not the case. No one can assure that the people on death row are actually guilty, and if they are guilty, that they should have been sentenced to death."

Among measures recommended for improving the system are the removal of the infamous 21-day limit on the admission of evidence of innocence and the publicizing of the names of those who have engaged in prosecutorial misconduct.

"Whatever one's views of the merits of capital punishment," said John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute, "no one supports the execution of an innocent person. Yet it is possible that Virginia has already executed innocent persons, and there are insufficient safeguards to ensure that the innocent are not executed in the future." Whitehead added that "if the commonwealth is to assume the responsibility of ending human life, it is imperative that -- at the very least -- it administer such a system in a manner that ensures that no innocent person is executed and that no one is executed because of arbitrary or discriminatory factors."

The Rutherford Institute is an international, nonprofit civil liberties organization committed to defending constitutional and human rights.

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