by Holden Walter-Warner at The Daily Mail
Virginia took a historic step on Wednesday by becoming the first state in the South to eliminate the death penalty.
Gov. Ralph Northam signed the legislation a month after the Virginia General Assembly voted to strike down capital punishment in the state.
Virginia became the 23rd state in the country to get rid of the death penalty. Additionally, there are three states – Oregon, California, and Pennsylvania – where a governor-issued moratorium on executions is in effect.
The law is not scheduled to take effect until July 1, but no executions are set to take place in the interim.
According to the Associated Press, the sentences of two men left on death row, Anthony Juniper and Thomas Porter, will now become life sentences without parole.
Juniper was convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend, her brother, and two of her children. Porter was sentenced for killing a Norfolk police officer.
On Wednesday, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam signed a bill abolishing the death penalty
In doing so, Virginia became the first state in the South to abolish the death penalty
‘Justice and punishment are not always the same thing, that is too clearly evident in 400 years of the death penalty in Virginia,’ Northam said during the bill signing, according to NBC News.
Maryland, which is sometimes considered to be a Southern state, though it’s not considered part of the ‘Old South’ of Confederate states, abolished the death penalty back in 2013.
In Virginia, 1,390 people have been put to death via capital punishment since 1608. That includes 113 people who have been executed since 1976, the year the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty four years after striking it down…
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