Delegate

Delegate

Gilbert

wants

to pull

triggerman

rule

By Pat Kane

Capital News Service

In his work as a commonwealth’s

attorney prosecuting

criminal cases, C. Todd Gilbert has seen the limitations of Virginia’s laws.

Now a freshman delegate representing Shenandoah, Page and Rappahannock Counties, Gilbert is bringing his courtroom experience to the General Assembly. Two bills by Gilbert to expand the capital murder statute have passed the House of Delegates and are awaiting their turn in the Senate.

House Bill 782, approved 83-16 by delegates, would allow accomplices to be tried for capital murder. Virginia’s code was drafted when the constitutionality of the death sentence was in flux, Gilbert said, and it has become outdated. Currently, only the actual killer can be charged with capital murder and put to death. This is known as the triggerman rule.

“The triggerman rule was established at a time when the constitutionality of the death penalty was in some disarray,” Gilbert said. “Thirty-six states now treat accomplices the same way that they treat the principal actor.”

Gilbert said the triggerman rule violates the concept of fairness in the criminal justice system: “The whole idea that equally culpable defendants can be treated differently just doesn’t make any sense.”

His bill to eliminate the triggerman rule was inspired by the trials of John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, who terrorized the Washington and Richmond areas in a series of sniper attacks in the fall of 2002. Malvo actually fired the bullets that claimed 10 lives, but the 18-year-old was influenced by Muhammad, Gilbert said.

“Were it not for the case that the General Assembly had carved out an exemption for terrorism, [Muhammad] would have escaped the death penalty,” Gilbert said. “Here you had a guy who had convinced this young kid to commit these heinous, random murderous acts. And he was clearly just as culpable as Malvo, who was actually

See KANE, Page A7