http://wvmetronews.com/2017/04/24/delegates-long-fight-to-bring-back-death-penalty-in-wv/
Fifty-eight years ago this month (April 3), Elmer David Brunner was executed at the West Virginia Penitentiary in Moundsville. Brunner, who was convicted of murdering Ruby Miller in her Huntington home during a burglary, was the last person to die in the state’s electric chair.
Six years after that execution, West Virginia abolished the death penalty, substituting life in prison without parole for capital punishment. Since then, one member of the state Legislature has been the most consistent champion of bringing back the ultimate form of punishment.
Delegate John Overington (R-Berkeley) is serving his 33rd year in the Legislature, and for 32 of those years he has sponsored bills to bring back the death penalty, and 32 times he has failed. Overington says for all but three years of his tenure, Democrats controlled the Legislature and they refused to take up the issue.
“Even though many Democrats supported it, the leadership was never willing to take it up or put it on the agenda.” However, even though the Republicans are in charge now, death penalty bills are still not a priority.
“When Republicans took over the House and Senate three years ago our main focus was jobs and economic development. This year the main focus was on getting the budget balanced,” Overington told me during an appearance on Talkline last week. “We know that the issue will be very emotional and time consuming and basically the leadership did not have two or three days to focus on that issue.”
The death penalty surged back into the news this month with the uproar over plans by Arkansas to carry out eight executions in eleven days which, according to the Washington Post, “would have been a pace of executions unmatched in modern American capital punishment, a time-frame officials said was needed because one of their lethal-injection drugs will expire at the end of April.”
West Virginia’s poster child for the death penalty is Ronald Turney Williams. He was serving life in prison for the 1975 murder of Beckley Police officer David Lilly when he lead a breakout of 15 inmates from the Moundsville prison. Williams shot and killed off duty state trooper Philp Kesner during the breakout and, while on the run, committed another murder in Arizona.*
But West Virginia also has the poster child for death penalty opponents—Fred Zain. An investigation determined that the former State Police crime laboratory serologist falsified evidence in as many as 134 criminal cases in the 1980’s. Imagine if the state had the death penalty during that period how many people would have been wrongly executed.
But Overington is undeterred. He has sent letters to the House Speaker and the Senate President asking for the death penalty to be placed on the agenda for an upcoming legislative interim committee meeting so it can be discussed and studied.
“This will give us a chance to see in what states it works the best (and) which states have safeguards to make sure no mistakes are made. If we study it, we should be in a good position next year to take it up and adopt it,” Overington said.
Well, maybe. Gallup surveys find support for the death penalty in this country is on the decline. Sixty percent still favor capital punishment for a person convicted of murder, but that’s down from 80 percent in 1996. Thirty-one states allow the death penalty, but as Chris Stirewalt of Fox News reported last week, “Since 2013, 120 of 128 executions have taken place in six states: Texas, Oklahoma, Georgia, Florida, Missouri and Alabama. Texas alone was responsible for 50 of those.”
The death penalty is not one of the pivotal social issues it was a couple of decades ago when presidential candidates were often caught up in capital punishment debates. As Stirewalt contends, “What was once the main battle of America’s culture war is now hardly a skirmish.”
* Williams was recaptured and is now serving life at the West Virginia State prison in Mount Oliver. Williams, who turned 74 this month, does not have a parole hearing scheduled until 2047.
Fifty-eight years ago this month (April 3), Elmer David Brunner was executed at the West Virginia Penitentiary in Moundsville. Brunner, who was convicted of murdering Ruby Miller in her Huntington home during a burglary, was the last person to die in the state’s electric chair.
Six years after that execution, West Virginia abolished the death penalty, substituting life in prison without parole for capital punishment. Since then, one member of the state Legislature has been the most consistent champion of bringing back the ultimate form of punishment.
Delegate John Overington (R-Berkeley) is serving his 33rd year in the Legislature, and for 32 of those years he has sponsored bills to bring back the death penalty, and 32 times he has failed. Overington says for all but three years of his tenure, Democrats controlled the Legislature and they refused to take up the issue.
“Even though many Democrats supported it, the leadership was never willing to take it up or put it on the agenda.” However, even though the Republicans are in charge now, death penalty bills are still not a priority.
“When Republicans took over the House and Senate three years ago our main focus was jobs and economic development. This year the main focus was on getting the budget balanced,” Overington told me during an appearance on Talkline last week. “We know that the issue will be very emotional and time consuming and basically the leadership did not have two or three days to focus on that issue.”
The death penalty surged back into the news this month with the uproar over plans by Arkansas to carry out eight executions in eleven days which, according to the Washington Post, “would have been a pace of executions unmatched in modern American capital punishment, a time-frame officials said was needed because one of their lethal-injection drugs will expire at the end of April.”
West Virginia’s poster child for the death penalty is Ronald Turney Williams. He was serving life in prison for the 1975 murder of Beckley Police officer David Lilly when he lead a breakout of 15 inmates from the Moundsville prison. Williams shot and killed off duty state trooper Philp Kesner during the breakout and, while on the run, committed another murder in Arizona.*
But West Virginia also has the poster child for death penalty opponents—Fred Zain. An investigation determined that the former State Police crime laboratory serologist falsified evidence in as many as 134 criminal cases in the 1980’s. Imagine if the state had the death penalty during that period how many people would have been wrongly executed.
But Overington is undeterred. He has sent letters to the House Speaker and the Senate President asking for the death penalty to be placed on the agenda for an upcoming legislative interim committee meeting so it can be discussed and studied.
“This will give us a chance to see in what states it works the best (and) which states have safeguards to make sure no mistakes are made. If we study it, we should be in a good position next year to take it up and adopt it,” Overington said.
Well, maybe. Gallup surveys find support for the death penalty in this country is on the decline. Sixty percent still favor capital punishment for a person convicted of murder, but that’s down from 80 percent in 1996. Thirty-one states allow the death penalty, but as Chris Stirewalt of Fox News reported last week, “Since 2013, 120 of 128 executions have taken place in six states: Texas, Oklahoma, Georgia, Florida, Missouri and Alabama. Texas alone was responsible for 50 of those.”
The death penalty is not one of the pivotal social issues it was a couple of decades ago when presidential candidates were often caught up in capital punishment debates. As Stirewalt contends, “What was once the main battle of America’s culture war is now hardly a skirmish.”
* Williams was recaptured and is now serving life at the West Virginia State prison in Mount Oliver. Williams, who turned 74 this month, does not have a parole hearing scheduled until 2047.
