Virginia, a state that has executed more people than any other US state, has abolished the death penalty.
The bill that was approved by the Democrat majority House and the Senate of the state has become the law after the state's governor Ralph Northam signed the bill.
Governor Northam said in a press conference it was the moral thing to abolish the fundamentally flawed death penalty.
“This is a major change because our Commonwealth has a long history with capital punishment. Over our 400-year history, Virginia has executed more than 1,300 people, more than any other state for 200 years,” he said.
Virginia becomes the first southern state or the former confederate state to abolish the Death Penalty. Twenty-two other US states have abolished the death penalty so far.
It has executed more people than any other state. In the last half a century, only Texas has executed more people than Virginia.
The state executed more than 113 people in the years after 1976 when the US Supreme Court restored the states' right to enact Death Penalty.
Governor said capital punishment is commonly and unfairly used only against Black or non-white people especially when their victims are whites.
“We know that this Commonwealth’s use of capital punishment has been inequitable in the 20th century; 296 of the 377 defendants that Virginia executed for murder were black,” Northam told reporters.
