A prosecutor's decision not to seek a death penalty for the man accused of abducting and killing a British-born University of Virginia student is emblematic of capital punishment's decline across America and in the state that once operated one of the busiest execution chambers in the U.S.
Virginia has sent only six people to death row in the last nine years after sending 40 over the previous eight years, according to statistics compiled by the Death Penalty Information Center, a Washington-based advocacy group that opposes capital punishment. As a result, the state only has eight inmates awaiting execution — down from a high of 57 in 1995 — and unless something changes, Jesse Matthew Jr. won't be joining them.
Experts say public opinion about the death penalty is shifting, partly because more than 150 people sentenced to die have been exonerated.
"That has shaken the confidence of jurors and the public so they are willing to convict people but not sentence them to death as much," said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center.
Dieter noted in a recent report that national Gallup polls show support for the death penalty has tumbled from 80 per cent in 1994 to 63 per cent. Meantime, death sentences nationally have declined from a peak of 315 in 1996 to 72 last year. Even Texas, by far the execution leader with 524 since 1976, has seen death sentences dwindle to fewer than a dozen a year after peaking at 43 in 1994.
In Virginia, Matthew is charged with first-degree murder in the death of 18-year-old student Hannah Graham, who moved to Virginia from Britain as a young child. He also is charged with abduction with intent to defile, which is the first of 15 offences listed in state law that can elevate a murder count to capital murder. Albemarle County's chief prosecutor has declined to say specifically why Matthew, who is due in court for a hearing on pretrial matters Tuesday, was not charged with capital murder.
Matthew's case is perhaps the most high-profile murder case in Virginia since the 2002 Washington-area sniper shootings that left 10 dead. It is playing out as the death penalty is on the wane in Virginia, which has slipped from second to third nationally — behind Texas and Oklahoma — with 110 executions since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976. No executions are scheduled.
Legal experts say there are many reasons for the deceleration of the death penalty in Virginia, but perhaps the biggest is the establishment in 2004 of four regional capital defender offices staffed by attorneys and investigators who devote all their time to death penalty cases.
It's no coincidence, experts suggest, that the sharp downturn in death sentences began the year the capital defender offices opened. The year before, Virginia sent six people to death row. No more than two death sentences have been imposed in any year since.
A recent study by University of Virginia law professor John G. Douglass concluded that the number of capital murder charges has declined, but not as rapidly as the number of death sentences. Virginia prosecutors obtained an average of 34 capital murder indictments a year between 1995 and 1999, but only 22 per year from 2008 through 2013. The percentage of those cases going to trial fell from 38 per cent in the late '90s to 19 per cent, suggesting more cases are being resolved by plea negotiations resulting in punishment less than death.
Douglass agrees with others who cite establishment of the state-funded capital defender's offices, which operate on a budget of $3.5 million a year, as one of the reasons Virginia's death row has been steadily shrinking.
Doug Ramseur, the central region's capital defender, said one of the reasons more cases are being plea bargained "may be recognition that juries are giving out the death sentence less." That's due in part to a growing acceptance of life without parole as a reasonable alternative to death, Ramseur and other experts said.
"When a jury is assured a truly dangerous individual will never be released from prison, they feel more comfortable turning down a death penalty," said Michael Stone, head of the state's leading anti-capital punishment organization.
This content appears as provided to The Globe by the originating wire service. It has not been edited by Globe staff.