Death row inmates in Virginia who wish to die by lethal injection still could face execution by electrocution under a bill that advanced Thursday in the House of Delegates.
By a 4-1 voice vote, a House subcommittee on Militia, Police and Public Safety backed a measure that would override a condemned prisoner’s choice of execution in the case of a shortage of lethal injection drugs.
“It’s really a just a process issue. This doesn’t expand the death penalty in any way, shape or form,” Del. Jackson Miller, R-Manassas, sponsor of HB 1052, said in an interview Thursday.
Under current state law, a condemned prisoner may choose whether to die by lethal injection or the electric chair. If the inmate doesn’t select either option at least 15 days before the scheduled execution, the method is lethal injection by default.
Since the introduction of lethal injection in Virginia in the mid-1990s, most convicts on death row opted to die that way or were put to death that way by default. Only seven of the 86 people executed in Virginia since 1995 chose electrocution, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Miller said he wants to avoid a stay of execution when a prisoner has exhausted all appeals but the chemicals to administer lethal injection are not available on the day of the execution.
“It’s just getting more and more difficult for the Department of Corrections to find the chemicals necessary for the cocktail that they use for the lethal injection,” Miller said.
Source: roanoke.com, January 17, 2014
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