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ON THURSDAY, former Spotsylvanian Paul Warner Powell is to be executed for the 1999 murder of Stacie Reed, a Manassas-area teen he first tried to rape. Absent a miracle, Powell will be the 106th person put to death by Virginia since 1976, when the U.S. Supreme Court rewrote the rules for capital punishment.
Whether or not one cottons to the death penalty, several courts have ruled that--putting it in laymanese--if anybody deserves that punishment under Virginia law, this depraved man does.
Virginia ranks second to Texas in the number of executions carried out since 1976. Nevertheless, Virginia lawmakers during the current General Assembly have feverishly advanced legislation to expand the list of crimes subject to death.
This is not an avenue Virginia should choose to travel when the justice of capital punishment is under serious national debate and many executions are being delayed. Yet the avenue in the Old Dominion is congested with expansionist legislation. A bill that comes up annually, only to be tabled again this year, would redefine the state's "triggerman rule" to provide room on Death Row for accomplices to a murder--i.e., those who did not do the actual slaying--before, during, or after its commission. Defense attorneys would have a field day with that one.
Other bills, still wending their way to Mr. McDonnell's desk, include ones that would add to the list of death-penalty-eligible crimes the slaying of auxiliary police officers and fire marshals in the line of duty. These are more sensible expansions. Yet Virginia law already allows death for 15 separate crimes, and the murder of such public servants often could be covered by one or more of those statutes. Politically, no doubt, proponents of such bills saw new opportunities under Mr. McDonnell. Former Gov. Kaine, a different type of Roman Catholic than Mr. McDonnell, vetoed 15 expansion bills during his tenure.
Since the 1970s, 139 Death Row inmates have been cleared through DNA testing, emerging new evidence, and so on. Although it has yet to be shown that an innocent has been executed since 1976, increasing the Death House population by enlarging the periphery of capital crimes, besides smacking of demagoguery, is unwise. Even the strongest advocate of lethal justice should cringe at the idea of putting the wrong person under the sod.
