Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine called a temporary halt to executions in the state Tuesday.
Kaine’s stand is primarily a symbolic gesture. It formalizes a de facto national ban on executions while the U.S. Supreme Court considers whether lethal injection is constitutional.
But that didn’t stop Republican Attorney General Bob McDonnell, who is gearing up for his own run for governor, from making political hay of it. A McDonnell press release accuses Kaine of unnecessarily delaying justice – noting that Virginia’s condemned prisoners can opt for the electric chair, which isn’t part of the constitutional challenge.
We doubt that McDonnell believes any of the state’s 20 or so death row inmates will opt for Old Sparky. He simply wants to score a quick political point. He might ask Jerry Kilgore, who made his gung-ho support for capital punishment a cornerstone of his gubernatorial bid, about the success of such a strategy. The tough-guy stance will win votes in rural Virginia, but it has the potential to alienate voters in more urban locales.
As a practical matter, no one was going to be executed in Virginia – or anywhere else – until the Supreme Court rules. That ruling is expected in July. A four-month moratorium hardly amounts to an upending of Virginia law.
With his decision, Kaine provides a measure of certainty both to the state’s condemned prisoners and to the families of their victims. It makes little sense to set execution dates that will inevitably be postponed. This poses an emotional hardship on those involved and burdens the state and federal court systems with a flurry of unnecessary paperwork in the form of requests for stays of execution. Why go through such a pointless exercise?
McDonnell seems to favor this route, noting that a stay of execution "is first and foremost a legal decision to be made by a court." Perhaps McDonnell believes lawyers and judges don’t have enough work to do.
Kaine’s decision directly affects the case of Edward N. Bell, who was schedule to die on April 8 for the 1999 slaying of a Winchester police officer, Sgt. Rick Timbrook, 32. Bell shot Timbrook in the head as the officer ran after him in an attempt to arrest him for a parole violation. Timbrook’s wife gave birth to their son two months after her husband’s murder.
Bell deserves to be punished, and a jury determined that death was the appropriate sentence. The jury’s decision should be respected.
But this moratorium isn’t about Bell or any individual case. It’s about the way in which Virginia metes out death. The state uses a lethal injection protocol similar to the one challenged in the Kentucky case pending before the Supreme Court.
The court is to decide whether the three-drug protocol violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Some scientific experts have raised concerns that the procedure (if performed incorrectly) could paralyze a condemned prisoner without rendering him unconscious. In such a state, the prisoner might feel excruciating pain, but be unable to cry out or move. Even the most vocal advocates of the death penalty should be concerned about such a possibility.
We applaud Gov. Kaine’s decision to stay all executions in the state and await the court’s decision. If Virginia is to continue to practice capital punishment, state leaders must take every precaution to make certain that it is carried out in as humane a manner as possible.
Email
Facebook
Google
Twitter
Favorites
More
Advertisement