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Death Penalty Bears Down on O'Malley, Kaine
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Since 1976, Virginia has put 98 people to death, second only to Texas, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. (Maryland has executed five.)
Kaine was dogged during his 2005 bid for governor about whether he would implement the state's ultimate punishment. In an interview a month before the election, he made it clear that he embraced the Catholic Church's teachings that the death penalty is inhumane. He referred to Pope John Paul II, who said in 1999 that the United States' use of the death penalty was "cruel and unnecessary."
But Kaine also sought to draw distinctions between his personal beliefs and the policy of the state, saying the law requires the governor to implement the death penalty unless there are extraordinary circumstances.
Virginia's Republican nominee for governor, Jerry W. Kilgore, then the attorney general, seized on Kaine's personal opposition, running an ad stating, "Tim Kaine says that Adolf Hitler doesn't qualify for the death penalty."
Even though a Washington Poll that year showed that 76 percent of Virginia voters favored capital punishment, many observers believe the ads backfired and helped Kaine win the election.
Kaine has continued to wrestle with the death penalty since taking office last January. In interviews, he said the hardest part of his job is having to decide whether to let an execution proceed.
But he has largely done what he campaigned on. Four times, he has said he found no "compelling reason" to overturn the decision of the jury and appellate courts. Kaine has so far spared one man, at least temporarily.
Kaine has also spoken out against a state policy that allows death row inmates to decide if they want to die by lethal injection or the electric chair.
Last summer, convicted killer Brandon W. Hedrick chose to die by electric chair, making national headlines.
Kaine will soon face another tough decision relating to the death penalty: The Virginia Senate and House, both dominated by law-and-order conservatives, have approved bills to expand the use of capital punishment by making accomplices and the killers of judges and court witnesses eligible for the penalty.
"It's like how many ways can you ban gay marriage?" Kaine said. "Virginia would like to do it nine times rather than eight times. The death penalty statute is kind of the same way. . . . I've got to be convinced there is a problem, and I've got to be convinced that the bill fixes a problem."
