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Capital Punishment In Virginia
Capital punishment was abolished in Virginia on March 24, 2021, when Governor Ralph Northam signed a bill into law. The law took effect on July 1, 2021. Virginia is the 23rd state to abolish the death penalty, and the first southern state in United States history to do so. The first execution in what would become the United States was carried out in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1608, when Captain George Kendall was executed in Jamestown for spying. Since then, Virginia has executed more than 1,300 people, the most of any other state. In the modern, post-''Gregg'' era, Virginia conducted 113 executions, the third most in the country, behind only Texas and Oklahoma. The last execution in the state was on July 6, 2017, when William Morva was executed via lethal injection for murder. Early history The first recorded execution in the United States took place in 1608 at the Jamestown Colony in Virginia. Captain George Kendall was executed for treason. Hanging was the predominant m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lethal Injection
Lethal injection is the practice of injecting one or more drugs into a person (typically a barbiturate, paralytic, and potassium) for the express purpose of causing death. The main application for this procedure is capital punishment, but the term may also be applied in a broader sense to include euthanasia and other forms of suicide. The drugs cause the person to become unconscious, stops their breathing, and causes a heart arrhythmia, in that order. First developed in the United States, the method has become a legal means of execution in Mainland China, Thailand (since 2003), Guatemala, Taiwan, the Maldives, Nigeria, and Vietnam, though Guatemala abolished the death penalty for civilian cases in 2017 and has not conducted an execution since 2000, and the Maldives has never carried out an execution since its independence. Although Taiwan permits lethal injection as an execution method, no executions have been carried out in this manner; the same is true for Nigeria. Lethal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Allen Muhammad
John Allen Muhammad (born John Allen Williams; December 31, 1960 – November 10, 2009) was an American serial killer. He and his accomplice Lee Boyd Malvo carried out a series of shootings in ten states from February through September 2002, killing seven people, before moving their crimes into the Washington metropolitan area where they carried out the D.C. sniper attacks, which killed a further ten people before their apprehension. A native of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Muhammad changed his surname after joining the Nation of Islam in 1987. At Muhammad's trial, the prosecution claimed that the attacks were part of a plot to kill his ex-wife and regain custody of his children, but the judge ruled that there was insufficient evidence to support this argument. Muhammad's trial for one of the murders (of Dean Harold Meyers in Prince William County, Virginia) began in October 2003, and ended with his conviction for capital murder. Four months later he was sentenced to death. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Teresa Lewis
Teresa Wilson Bean Lewis (April 26, 1969 – September 23, 2010) was an American murderer who was the only woman on death row in Virginia prior to her execution. She was sentenced to death by lethal injection for the murders of her husband and stepson in October 2002. Lewis sought to profit from a $250,000 life insurance policy her stepson had taken out as a U.S. Army reservist in anticipation of his deployment to Iraq. In September 2010, Lewis became the first female inmate to die by lethal injection in the state of Virginia. The state had last executed a female, 17-year-old Virginia Christian, in 1912. The case led to debate over capital punishment owing to Lewis's sex, as well as to questions regarding her mental capacity. Capital punishment was abolished in Virginia on March 24, 2021, officially making Lewis the last woman to be executed in Virginia. Background Born on April 26, 1969, Teresa Wilson grew up in poverty in Danville, Virginia, where her parents both worked in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Virginia Christian
Virginia Christian (August 15, 1895 – August 16, 1912) was an African American teenager Capital punishment, executed by the state of Virginia. Convicted of first degree murder for killing her white employer Ida Belote, Christian became the only female minor executed in the United States in the 20th century. Virginia Christian left school at age 13 to work for Ida Belote. On March 18, 1912, when Christian was 16, Belote accused Christian of theft and attacked her. In response, Christian struck her with a broom handle and forced a towel down her throat, killing her. Christian was arrested and tried before an entirely white and male jury. Her lawyers, J. Thomas Newsome, Joseph Thomas Newsome and George Washington Fields, argued that the killing was not premeditated, but the jury found her guilty of first degree murder after only 23 minutes of deliberation. Despite a Virginia law aimed at placing minors in reformatories for first-time offenses, Christian was sentenced to death. Ch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rape
Rape is a type of sexual assault involving sexual intercourse, or other forms of sexual penetration, carried out against a person without consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority, or against a person who is incapable of giving valid consent, such as one who is unconscious, incapacitated, has an intellectual disability, or is below the legal age of consent ( statutory rape). The term ''rape'' is sometimes casually used interchangeably with the term ''sexual assault''. The rate of reporting, prosecuting and convicting for rape varies between jurisdictions. Internationally, the incidence of rapes recorded by the police during 2008 ranged, per 100,000 people, from 0.2 in Azerbaijan to 92.9 in Botswana with 6.3 in Lithuania as the median. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Race And Capital Punishment In The United States
The relationship between race and capital punishment in the United States has been studied extensively. As of 2014, 42 percent of those on death row in the United States were Black. As of October 2002, there were 12 executions of White defendants where the murder victim was Black, however, there were 178 executed defendants who were Black with a White murder victim. Since then, the number of white defendants executed where the murder victim was black has increased to just 21 (less than 1.36 percent of all executions), whereas the number of Black defendants executed where the murder victim was White has increased to 299 (nearly 19.4 percent of all executions). 54 percent of people wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death in the United States are black. Approximately 13.5% of death row inmates are of Hispanic or Latino descent. In 2019, individuals identified as Hispanic and Latino Americans accounted for 5.5% of homicides. Hispanic and Latino Americans make up 19% of the tot ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Martinsville Seven
The Martinsville Seven were a group of seven African Americans, African-American men from Martinsville, Virginia, who were all executed in 1951 by the state of Virginia after being convicted of raping a white woman. At the time of their arrest, all but one were between the ages of 18 and 23. They were quickly tried in six separate trials (two agreed to be tried together), and each was convicted and sentenced to death. It was the largest mass execution for rape that had been reported in the United States. On August 31, 2021, the Governor of Virginia pardoned the convictions of all seven men, 70 years after their deaths. The Civil Rights Congress defended the men originally, and later conducted two marches and other attempts to raise awareness and conduct a public campaign on behalf of their agenda. This was objected to by the NAACP, who feared further backlash because of the CRC's Communist affiliations. Martin A. Martin and other NAACP attorneys defended the men on appeals, attempti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
African American
African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from any of the Black people, Black racial groups of Africa. African Americans constitute the second largest ethno-racial group in the U.S. after White Americans. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of Slavery in the United States, Africans enslaved in the United States. In 2023, an estimated 48.3 million people self-identified as Black, making up 14.4% of the country’s population. This marks a 33% increase since 2000, when there were 36.2 million Black people living in the U.S. African-American history began in the 16th century, with Africans being sold to Atlantic slave trade, European slave traders and Middle Passage, transported across the Atlantic to Slavery in the colonial history of the United States, the Western He ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Electric Chair
The electric chair is a specialized device used for capital punishment through electrocution. The condemned is strapped to a custom wooden chair and electrocuted via electrodes attached to the head and leg. Alfred P. Southwick, a Buffalo, New York dentist, conceived this execution method in 1881. It was developed over the next decade as a more humane alternative to conventional executions, particularly hanging. First used in 1890, the electric chair became a symbol of capital punishment in the United States. The electric chair was also used extensively in the Philippines. It was initially thought to cause death through cerebral damage, but it was scientifically established in 1899 that death primarily results from ventricular fibrillation and cardiac arrest. Despite its historical significance in American capital punishment, electric chair use has declined with the adoption of lethal injection which was perceived as more humane. While some states retain electrocution as a legal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gibbet
Gibbeting is the use of a gallows-type structure from which the dead or dying bodies of criminals were hanged on public display to deter other existing or potential criminals. Occasionally, the gibbet () was also used as a method of public execution, with the criminal being left to die of exposure, thirst and/or starvation. The practice of placing a criminal on display within a gibbet is also called "hanging in chains". Display Gibbeting was a common law punishment, which a judge could impose in addition to execution. As a sentence for murder, this practice was codified in England by the Murder Act 1751. It was most often used for traitors, robbers, murderers, highwaymen, and pirates and was intended to discourage others from committing similar offenses. The structures were therefore often placed next to public highways (frequently at crossroads) and waterways. Exhibiting a body could backfire against a monarch, especially if the monarch was unpopular. The rebels H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pirate
Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence by ship or boat-borne attackers upon another ship or a coastal area, typically with the goal of stealing cargo and valuable goods, or taking hostages. Those who conduct acts of piracy are called pirates, and vessels used for piracy are called pirate ships. The earliest documented instances of piracy were in the 14th century BC, when the Sea Peoples, a group of ocean raiders, attacked the ships of the Aegean and Mediterranean civilisations. Narrow channels which funnel shipping into predictable routes have long created opportunities for piracy, as well as for privateering and commerce raiding. Historic examples of such areas include the waters of Gibraltar, the Strait of Malacca, Madagascar, the Gulf of Aden, and the English Channel, whose geographic structures facilitated pirate attacks. The term ''piracy'' generally refers to maritime piracy, although the term has been generalized to refer to acts committed on land, in th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
