If McAuliffe allows the execution of serial killer Alfredo Prieto to go forward on Oct. 1, it will be the state’s first in more than 30 months. It would also make McAuliffe only the third sitting Democratic governor to execute someone.
Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe
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WASHINGTON — On Oct. 1, Alfredo Prieto, a serial killer sentenced to death by juries in two different states, is scheduled to be executed by the Commonwealth of Virginia. If Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe allows the execution to go forward, it will make him only the third sitting Democratic governor to execute someone.
Death penalty opponents have asked Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who has the sole authority to grant clemency in Virginia, to "grant a temporary reprieve of his execution" so that Prieto can be transferred to California, where he has challenged his second death sentence by claiming intellectual disability.
Prieto also has a case pending before the Supreme Court about the conditions he faces in Virginia's prisons — death row inmates are automatically placed in solitary confinement — but that case, obviously, will come to an end should Prieto be put to death.
All signs at the moment point to the commonwealth preparing to move forward with the execution. This past week, Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring's office said that there were no challenges pending to his Virginia convictions that would prevent him from being executed.
Earlier this year, McAuliffe supported an effort to shield information about how Virginia obtained its lethal injection drugs. The measure failed, however, and on Thursday lawyers in an unrelated case in Oklahoma claimed in a court filing there that public records from Virginia show that the commonwealth purchased its current supply of its execution drug, pentobarbital, from the state of Texas.
On Friday, Virginia confirmed the claim, with its department of corrections spokesperson specifying that the drug purchase was intended to be used to execute Prieto next week.
In a story earlier this year addressing his support for the pending secrecy legislation, spokesman Brian Coy told The Washington Post that McAuliffe does not support the death penalty but would enforce it: "He is a Catholic, so there is a moral component to his position on the issue, but he's governor, and he will enforce the law."
Coy did not immediately respond to a request Saturday for comment on whether McAuliffe is considering using his clemency authority to stop Prieo's execution.
As The Washington Post reported last year, Prieto "has been convicted of murdering three people, raping two of them, and DNA or ballistics link him to another six homicides and two rapes."
Nonetheless, his execution in Virginia would both be unusual and is a sign of the changing landscape for the death penalty.
Historically, in the period since the Supreme Court ended its four-year moratorium on executions in 1976, Virginia has been one of the more active death penalty states in the country, having conducted 110 executions—14 in one year, 1999.
In the past five years, however, the commonwealth has only executed two people. McAuliffe's predecessor, Bob McDonnell, conducted both. The most recent execution in Virginia took place more than two-and-a-half years ago, when Robert Gleason was electrocuted for the murders of two men.
McAuliffe is not quite half-way through his single term-limited four-year term, but the commonwealth has yet to conduct an execution under his watch. Likewise, while several recent Virginia governors have granted clemency to at least one person on death row under their watch — including Govs. Douglas Wilder, George Allen, Jim Gilmore, Mark Warner, and Tim Kaine — McAuliffe has not.
This issue has not come up, in part, because only eight people remain on Virginia's death row. In addition to the significant number of executions carried out by the commonwealth between 1995 and 2000, there has been a large decrease in the number of people added to Virginia's death row. No one in the commonwealth has been sentenced to death since McAuliffe became governor in January 2014. Mark Lawlor was the last person added to Virginia's death row back in 2011.
While the diminishing role of the death penalty in Virginia is one element of why Prieto's execution would be unusual, another is the national political scene. Among Democratic governors in America, only two have allowed executions to proceed under his or her watch.
McAuliffe would be the third. The only other two sitting Democratic governors to execute anyone are Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, whose state tied Texas in 2014 for the most executions in the country, and Delaware Gov. Jack Markell, whose state had two executions in his first term in office. Markell, however, has said he would sign death penalty abolition legislation that was passed by the state's senate, but stalled in the house, earlier this year.
Among other Democratic governors, seven are running states with no death penalty, including one — Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy — who signed legislation ending the death penalty into law. The others are Hawaii Gov. David Ige, Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo, Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin, and West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin.
Four Democratic governors have put a moratorium on executions in place: Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper; Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, who extended the previous governor's moratorium; Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf; and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee.
Markell and one other governor, New Hampshire Gov. Maggie Hassan, said they would sign death penalty abolition legislation considered in their respective states this year, and a third, California Gov. Jerry Brown has said he opposes the death penalty. Neither Hassan nor Brown have conducted any executions. Finally, no execution have taken place during the terms of Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear or Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, and no executions are expected to be set during their time in office.
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