Virginia
It took Virginia 400 years to end the death penalty. It’s not a switch we can flip on and off. – Virginia Mercury
Of all the things policymakers can be indecisive about, the death penalty shouldn’t be one of them. It is, after all, about the most profound and irreversible thing a government can do.
Yet this year, not three years after Virginia banned capital punishment, freshman Del. Tim Griffin, R-Bedford, submitted a bill to reinstate it. Mercifully, it was doomed from the outset in the Democratic-ruled House of Delegates. With all due allowances for naïveté, political posturing or whatever Griffin’s motivation, the death penalty isn’t a light switch you flip on and off.
It took Virginia more than 400 years to end capital punishment. When the General Assembly finally did it in 2021, there was even miniscule Republican buy-in on final votes that made Virginia the only former Confederate state to dismantle death row in favor of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for the most heinous offenses.
Ours is among 23 states that have abolished the death penalty. Six others have halted executions by governors’ orders. Only five states executed people last year, and death sentences were imposed in just seven states, according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center.
Things were once quite different. Until this century, Virginia was an enthusiastic death penalty backer and practitioner. Since Jamestown, Virginia has executed an estimated 1,300 people.
The U.S. Supreme Court halted capital punishment in the latter third of the 20th century after it found its disparate implementation unconstitutionally “cruel and unusual.” After the court reinstated it in 1976, Virginia executed 113 inmates, according to the DPIC. That ranks third behind Texas (586) and Oklahoma (123) — body counts that will soon grow.
Why did Kiki Webb have to die?
Just the suggestion that a candidate might not support killing people to prove that killing people is wrong was politically disqualifying. It was a common Republican tactic to force Democratic candidates in statewide general elections to pledge support for the death penalty, putting them at odds with many in their own base to remain viable with the broader electorate.
In this century, Republicans failed to notice that Virginia’s appetite for state-sanctioned killings was waning and had been for some time. Part of that is because of demographic changes, especially in the moderate, educated, affluent and fast-growing suburbs.
Another factor was a by-product of a hugely successful Republican initiative that George Allen brought to the governor’s office from his 1993 election landslide.
After the General Assembly overwhelmingly enacted Allen’s abolition of parole in 1994, it meant that an inmate sentenced to life in prison would actually spend the rest of his life in prison. For jurors, that assurance eased the moral crisis they felt when deciding whether to prescribe death for a person sitting steps away from them. Assured that the convict could never walk free again, jurors increasingly eschewed death sentences and the haunting knowledge that they played a role in taking someone’s life.
The numbers tell the story. After the court-ordered hiatus, it took a few years for new death penalty convictions to exhaust their federal and state appeals. Executions resumed in Virginia in 1982. For the rest of that decade, eight people perished in the state’s death chamber. During the 1990s, however, the decade parole was abolished, the total soared to 58. From 2000 through 2009, the total was cut in half, to just 28. And from 2010 through 2017, the year William Morva became the last convict executed in Virginia, it dropped to eight.
The ’90s were also the most robust decade for executions nationally, peaking with 98 in 1999, according to the DPIC.
Death penalty politics reached a significant political flashpoint in Virginia’s 2005 gubernatorial race between Democrat Tim Kaine, the lieutenant governor at the time and now a U.S. senator, and Republican Jerry Kilgore, who had been the state’s attorney general. In a Kilgore campaign ad, the grieving father of a murder victim claimed that Kaine, a lawyer who had defended a death penalty client and a Roman Catholic with a faith-based objection to the death penalty, would have spared Adolf Hitler from execution.
The ad was widely panned as a gratuitous, tone-deaf overreach, and it boomeranged on Kilgore’s campaign as it was already imploding. Kaine quickly aired a rebuttal in which he spoke directly into the camera and said that he would “carry out death sentences imposed by Virginia juries because that’s the law.”
And he did — 11 times from the day he took office in January 2006 through the end of his term four years later. The last to be executed under Kaine’s watch was John Allan Muhammad, convicted as one of the two snipers who terrorized Virginia, the District of Columbia and Maryland in 2002, shooting 10 people dead and injuring three.
Capital punishment is an emotional issue that almost evenly divides the nation. A 2023 Gallup poll showed that 50% of those surveyed said they felt the death penalty is unfairly applied compared to 47% who felt it was fairly applied.
Consider the obvious: Very few people of means go to death row. It’s a different story if you’re Black or poor. Of the 113 executed Virginia inmates, 52 of them — 46% — were Black, a ratio more than double the state’s Black population of 20%. For defendants who can’t afford skilled, experienced death-penalty litigators, the odds are even worse.
Is our criminal justice system so infallible that it should green-light actions as irrevocable as taking another person’s life? Hardly.
According to the DPIC, 196 people sentenced to death nationally since 1973 have been exonerated, including Virginia’s Earl Washington Jr., who was poor and Black. Washington, with an IQ of 69, spent 16 years incarcerated — nine on death row, once within days of being executed — because of false and misleading forensic evidence, woeful trial counsel and his own coerced confession. Gov. Doug Wilder commuted his sentence to life imprisonment in 1993. Gov. Jim Gilmore pardoned Washington in 2000 after DNA testing, not available at the time of his trial in 1984, exonerated him from the murder and rape for which he was convicted.
Griffin’s misbegotten bid to restore capital punishment foundered just before an Alabama execution underscored misgivings Americans increasingly harbor about terminal punishment more suited to despotic regimes.
Virginia abolished biased, inefficient, botched executions; more states should follow suit
Like many states unable to procure the drugs necessary to execute people by lethal injection, Alabama tested a novel way to kill: subjecting the condemned – strapped to a gurney – to pure nitrogen, depriving him of oxygen. Alabama’s attorney general called it “a textbook execution,” promised further hypoxia executions in Alabama and offered to tutor other states in its use.
Associated Press writer Kim Chandler, a witness to the execution, described something much more unnerving. For about two minutes, according to AP’s first-person account, condemned murderer Kenneth Eugene Smith shook and writhed violently, “in thrashing spasms and seizure-like movements,” the force of which “caused the gurney to visibly move at least once.”
There’s no way to inflict death on a confined, terrified human being that doesn’t horrify an ordinary person. That’s because no matter the method — an intravenous drip of lethal drugs, electrical voltage, a noose, a firing squad or nitrogen gas — the end result is a fresh corpse. Each is just as final, its victims just as eternally dead.
If those methods knot your stomach, then maybe our conversations should be about whether governments should execute people, not how.
HENRICO, Va. (WWBT) – The Virginia Sports Hall of Fame announced its Class of 2026 on Wednesday.
This year’s group of athletes, coaches, administrators, and contributors whose influence spans generations, levels of competitions across the state. This includes one man from Richmond, who has also been named the 2026 Distinguished Virginian.
The Class of 2026 inductees are as follows:
- Bobby Ukrop (Richmond): Robert S. “Bobby” Ukrop has been named the “2026 Distinguished Virginian” presented to an individual with a sports background who is a distinguished citizen of the Commonwealth based on outstanding life accomplishment”. A former basketball player at the University of Richmond, Ukrop has been a transformative community leader, leading initiatives throughout Central Virginia including the founding of Richmond Sports Backers, construction of the Diamond baseball stadium, efforts to “Drown-proof Virginia” learn to swim initiative.
- Grant Hill (Reston): ACC Player of the Year; two-time consensus All American; two-time NCAA Champion; one of the ACC’s 50 Greatest Players; 19-year NBA career – 17,137 points -7-time NBA All-Star- 3-time NBA Sportsmanship Award; Olympic Gold Medalist; member of the College and Naismith Memorial Basketball Halls of Fame. National broadcaster for both NCAA and NBA games. Co-owner of the Atlanta Hawks (NBA) Orlando City SC (MLS), Orlando Pride (NWSL) and the Baltimore Orioles (MLB).
- Marcellus “Boo” Williams (Hampton): Widely regarded as one of the most successful and influential youth basketball coaches in the nation, Williams has helped shape the careers of countless young men’s and women’s players. Walt Disney Wide World of Sports named Williams its 2001 Volunteer of the Year; The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame presented him with its 2013 Human Spirit Award. Williams currently operates his youth basketball programs from the 135,000 sq. ft. Boo Williams Sportsplex in Hampton.
- Michael Vick (Newport News): The former Virginia Tech standout and NFL quarterback, Vick became one of the most dynamic players of his generation. At Virginia Tech, Vick led the Hokies to the 1999 National Championship game and was a 1st team All-American and a member of the College Football Hall of Fame. The #1 overall pick in the 2001 NFL draft, Vick played in the NFL for 13 seasons, earning 4 Pro Bowl selections and the 2010 NFL Comeback Player of the Year. After his retirement, Vick was a commentator for Fox NFL Sunday. He is currently the head coach of the Norfolk State University Spartans.
- Wally Walker (Charlottesville): Often credited with starting the prominence of UVA basketball, Walker led the Cavaliers to their first NCAA tournament berth in 1976 when he was the MVP of the ACC Tournament. Walker was the #5 overall pick of the 1976 NBA draft and played for 8 NBA seasons winning two NBA Championships. Following his playing career, Walker moved to the front office, to become the President of Seattle SuperSonics.
- Kristi Toliver (Harrisonburg): One of the most accomplished basketball players in Virginia history. Toliver was the 2009 ACC Player of the Year, a 2-time All-American, NCAA National Champion, 1st round WNBA selection, 2-time WNBA Champion and a 3-time WNBA AllStar. Toliver is currently the associate head coach of the Phoenix Mercury in the WNBA.
- Terry Driscoll (Williamsburg): A visionary leader in collegiate athletics, Driscoll served with distinction as the Director of Athletics at William & Mary for 22 years, during which the Tribe won 114 Conference Championships, had 118 teams with 100% graduation rates and oversaw a dramatic increase in funding for new facilities and the College’s endowment. A true “Scholar-Athlete” himself, Driscoll was an Athletic and Academic All-American, the #4 overall pick in the 1969 NBA draft, and a championship professional coach in Europe.
- Roland Lazenby (Wytheville): A former reporter with the Roanoke Times, Lazenby is best known for his award-winning author of over 60 sports books that has vaulted him to the top of his profession. Widely regarded as an “expert or authority” on NBA basketball, several of his most prominent books are “go to” references on Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant.
- Tony Bennett: Former University of Virginia basketball coach, two-time Naismith Coach of the Year, and national championship coach as long stood among college basketball’s most respected leaders. Over an 18-season head coaching career, including stops at Washington State and the University of Virginia, he compiled a remarkable 433-and-169 overall record. He took over Virginia in 2009 and transformed the Cavaliers into a powerhouse, amassing a 364- 136 record while becoming the programs all-time wins leader. His crowning achievement came in 2019, when his team captured the NCAA national championship- a milestone that delivered Virginia its first ever national title in men’s basketball. Under Bennett’s stewardship, Virginia won six regular season conference titles, two conference championships, and made 10 NCAA Tournament appearances.
The 53rd induction events are set for Saturday, April 25, 2026, at the Hilton Richmond Hotel and Spa/Short Pump.
Copyright 2025 WWBT. All rights reserved.
Virginia
Feds want graduate nursing programs to reduce costs. This Virginia nurse worries changes will increase debt.
RICHMOND, Va. — University of Virginia graduate nursing student Nelly Sekyere worries that proposed federal loan cuts could prevent future students like herself from pursuing advanced nursing degrees that are helpful in filling shortages in underserved communities.
Sekyere’s parents moved to the United States from Ghana to pursue the American Dream. They worked hourly wage jobs to support their two kids and ultimately became licensed practical nurses, but they never had much money.
Nelly Sekyere
“My dad’s credit score was to the point where it was just awful. He had to file for bankruptcy. He was in so much debt,” Sekyere said.
Still, their children had big dreams and understood the value of hard work. Sekyere, who currently works as a nurse for a local health department, is now a student at UVA pursuing her doctorate to become a family nurse practitioner and to teach others who want to be nurses.
“I do plan to work in underserved communities and rural regions because that is something I am used to, and I feel that is where my expertise are needed the most,” Sekyere said.
She is able to pursue the doctorate because she qualifies for $200,000 in federal graduate degree loans. She said that without the loans, she couldn’t afford the degree.
“I would not. I physically could not afford it,” Sekyere said.
But future nursing graduate students like her may not be able to access as much federal loan money under graduate loan program changes within the One Big Beautiful Bill. Those changes would mean students enrolling in post-baccalaureate nursing programs would be eligible for half the amount of money in federal graduate loans they are currently allowed to take out.
Currently, they can take out $200,000 in federal graduate loans. That number would drop to $100,000 if the changes take effect.
“This impacts those that are pursuing a master’s in nursing, a doctorate of nursing practice or a PhD in nursing,” said Cindy Rubenstein, Director of Nursing and a professor at Randolph Macon College. “Those graduate programs actually prepare nurses to be advanced practice nurses whether that is a Nurse Practioner in primary care, midwives specialists, and also as educators and nurse scientists.”
On its website, the U.S. Department of Education states “95% of nursing students borrow below the annual loan limit and are therefore not affected by the new caps. Further, placing a cap on loans will push the remaining graduate nursing programs to reduce costs, ensuring that nurses will not be saddled with unmanageable student loan debt.”
Rubenstein said she understands the administration’s desire to control tuition costs and limit borrowing amounts. But she says the reality is that the proposal does not take into account the cost of key professional programs that we have shortages in.
“Health care training at the graduate level is more expensive than other training programs and other graduate degrees and that is because of the requirements for clinical practice,” Rubenstein said.
Both Rubenstein and Sekyere worry that reducing the amount of federal loan money a person can take out to pursue those higher nursing degrees will stop people from entering the programs because they either don’t qualify for a private loan or the interest rate is too high.
“I likely foresee in the future that graduate students are going to get themselves into private loan debt and with these programs there is no student loan forgiveness, there is no leniency, there is no income driven plans for you to be able to pay that back,” Sekyere said.
The federal loan changes are slated to take effect July 1 of next year. The Education Department is still working to define exactly which professional programs will no longer be eligible for the higher loan amounts and may make changes based on public comments.
CBS 6 asked Congressman Rob Wittman (R-1st District), who voted for the One Big Beautiful Bill, about the changes to the graduate nursing loans, and he sent us the following statement:
“Our healthcare professionals, especially our nurses, work tirelessly to serve our communities and ensuring pathways to training and education is essential. This proposed rule from the Department of Education has not yet been finalized, and there will be another opportunity for public comment. I will continue to monitor this situation as it develops and I remain committed to addressing the affordability of higher education.”
CBS 6 is committed to sharing community voices on this important topic. Email your thoughts to the CBS 6 Newsroom.
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