‡ Persons with death sentences in multiple states ^^ New Hampshire prospectively abolished the death penalty May 30, 2019. The bill reduced the state’s two death sentences to life without parole. ^ Virginia abolished the death penalty with an effective date of July 1, 2021. † Data from NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund for July 1 of the year shown Atlantic coast from the Canadian border of Maine to the northern border of the Carolinas. On March 24, Virginia became the first southern state to repeal capital punishment, and expanded the death-penalty-free zone on the U.S. As the state grappled with its history of slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings, and the 70 thĪnniversary of seven wrongful executions, the governor and legislative leaders came to see the end of the death penalty as a crucial step towards racial justice. A combination of changing state demographics, eroding public support, high-quality defense representation, and the election of reform prosecutors in many key counties produced a decade with no new death sentences in the Commonwealth. Virginia’s path to abolition of the death penalty was emblematic of capital punishment’s receding reach in the United States. The death penalty in 2021 was defined by two competing forces: the continuing long-term erosion of capital punishment across most of the country, and extreme conduct by a dwindling number of outlier jurisdictions to continue to pursue death sentences and executions.
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