Mark Earley, former Virginia attorney general, now opposes death penalty

2014, JOE MAHONEY Former Virginia Attorney General Mark Earley was a guest speaker during a death penalty symposium at the University of Richmond School of Law, Friday, Oct. 24, 2014.

Posted: Wednesday, April 8, 2015 10:30 pm

By FRANK GREEN Richmond Times-Dispatch

Mark L. Earley, Virginia’s attorney general during one of the busiest execution stretches in modern state history, has changed his mind about capital punishment.

“If you believe that the government always ‘gets it right,’ never makes serious mistakes, and is never tainted with corruption, then you can be comfortable supporting the death penalty,” he wrote in a recent essay for the University of Richmond Law Review.

“I no longer have such faith in the government and, therefore, cannot and do not support the death penalty,” wrote Earley, attorney general from 1998 until June 3, 2001, when he resigned to run for governor.

House rejects bill to keep execution drugs secret

BOB BROWN/TIMES-DISPATCH Democratic members vote for an amendment to SB1393, the bill of Sen. Richard L. Salslaw, D-Fairfax, dealing with keeping the drugs used for lethal injection a secret, during the floor session of the Virginia House of Delegates at the State Capitol in Richmond, VA Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2015. After the amendment failed, the bill later was rejected 56-42.

Posted: Tuesday, February 24, 2015 1:00 pm

By ANDREW CAIN Richmond Times-Dispatch

The House of Delegates voted 56-42 Tuesday to defeat a measure that would have shrouded Virginia’s lethal injection process in secrecy.

Senate Bill 1393, sponsored by Senate Minority Leader Richard L. Saslaw, D-Fairfax, had passed the Senate on a 23-14 vote Feb. 10.

Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s administration had backed the legislation that would have allowed the state to prevent public disclosure of the drugs used in lethal injection executions and the drugs’ manufacturers.

Slate – The Capital Punishment Cover-Up

Virginia wants to hide “all information relating to the execution process.”

Greensville Correctional Center near Jarratt, Virginia, lethal injection gurney The gurney used for administering lethal injection at the Greensville Correctional Center near Jarratt, Virginia.

Photo by the Virginia Department of Corrections via Getty Images

A series of botched executions in Ohio, Oklahoma, and Arizona last year raised serious new questions about how death penalty drugs are administered. They have drawn fresh scrutiny from the Supreme Court itself, which agreed last month to assess whether a lethal injection cocktail used in Oklahoma violates the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment. A month ago Ohio announced that officials would stop using one of the drugs in the current protocol, midazolam, after a botched execution involving untested drugs last year. And on Friday, Ohio Gov. John Kasich announced that the state would postpone all seven scheduled 2015 executions, partly because of questions surrounding the controversial drug cocktail Ohio had been using.