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Virginia senator pushes to abolish the death penalty
Brut America
Follow
3/25/2025
"The problem with capital punishment is that once it's inflicted you can't take it back."
In a push to abolish the death penalty, here's what Virginia Senator Scott Surovell had to say.
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00:00
I cannot think of anything that's more awful, unspeakable, and wrong for a government to do
00:08
than to use its power to execute somebody who didn't commit the crime they're accused of.
00:13
The problem with capital punishment is that once it's inflicted you can't take it back,
00:16
can't be corrected.
00:17
Since our colony was founded, 1,389 people have been executed by our government in this state,
00:41
more than any other governmental entity in the United States of America.
00:45
I believe it's estimated that for about every 10 death sentences that are rendered,
00:49
one innocent person is convicted.
00:52
And I'll just give you chills to think of the
00:57
thousands of people in America who've been executed, how many of them were actually
01:01
innocent.
01:02
There is an indisputable connection between the death penalty and racial oppression,
01:08
and that is impossible to deny.
01:12
All you got to do is look at the statistics.
01:15
You're much more likely to receive a death sentence if you kill somebody who's white,
01:20
and you're not.
01:22
You're much more likely to get it if you're poor, if you're mentally disabled.
01:30
You're much more likely to get it if you have a diminished IQ.
01:34
You're much more likely to get it if you have a brain injury.
01:37
This is, you know, the folks who end up commit murders often have different sorts of problems.
01:44
Those problems put them in certain economic circumstances,
01:47
and those things collectively often result in people
01:50
getting a sentence that if they were, if they had the resources to defend themselves,
01:55
they probably wouldn't get the death penalty.
01:57
We ought to look at who we stand with today.
02:01
Ask yourself, what other countries are still doing this?
02:06
There's not a single other Western industrialized nation that's doing it.
02:10
The country that leads the world, as far as we know, in executions is China,
02:16
but we don't really know how many.
02:17
We just know they do a lot, over a thousand.
02:20
Next in line comes Iran.
02:22
After that is Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Egypt, and then the USA.
02:28
Right after us is Pakistan, and right on Pakistan's heels is Somalia.
02:33
And if we'd had this discussion, you know, seven, eight years ago,
02:39
we'd be standing there strong with ISIS.
02:41
When we think of America as being the beacon of hope and freedom that it is,
02:46
and we ask other countries in the world to look at how we adjudicate our people,
02:50
and we look at how we treat other people in our society,
02:55
this is not something to be proud of.
02:57
This system we have has just become completely untenable.
03:01
It just doesn't work anymore, and it's time to move on.
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