Death Penalty Showdown

Gov. Kaine, not the Virginia legislature, has chosen the right direction.

VIRGINIA'S LEGISLATURE, in seeking to expand the state death penalty, is bucking not just global trends but domestic ones. It is increasingly rare for American judges and juries to impose the death sentence and for states to carry it out. The number of executions undertaken has fallen steadily this decade; last year just 53 people were put to death, compared with 98 in 1999.

Despite that clear tilt away from state-sponsored killing, the General Assembly, voted to broaden the categories of convicts eligible for capital punishment to include killers of judges and of witnesses to capital crimes. Two other bills would eliminate the "triggerman rule," meaning accomplices in capital murder cases would also be eligible for the death penalty. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) vetoed the bills. That set up a showdown today with the Republican-controlled legislature, which will try to override the vetoes.

Advocates of widening eligibility for capital punishment got a boost from the trial of John Allen Muhammad, who was convicted along with Lee Boyd Malvo for the 2002 sniper shootings in Virginia and Maryland. The claim is that the triggerman rule imperiled Mr. Muhammad's sentence. But the fact remains that prosecutors were able to secure a death sentence in his case by using a terrorism-related statute. That leads to the suspicion that politics, not questions of crime and punishment, is the real driver behind the legislative initiative.

There is no evidence that more inclusive death penalty laws enhance public safety. But by widening the field of convicts eligible for execution, the legislature does enhance the possibilities for mistakes that can lead to wrongful executions. It is just those sorts of errors that have gradually undercut public confidence in capital punishment. It is true that a majority of Americans still support the death penalty; but last year, for the first time in many years, slightly more said they preferred the option of life without parole.

Mr. Kaine, a lifelong opponent of the death penalty, said during his campaign for governor that he would nonetheless abide by state law in regard to capital cases crossing his desk. He has been as good as his word, allowing four scheduled executions to go forward, and delaying just one, on questions of mental competence. In permitting executions under existing statute, but declining to expand it, Mr. Kaine is in step with public opinion as well as with the dictates of his own conscience.