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By Pat Kane
Special to the Rappahannock News
RICHMOND — Two bills to expand Virginia’s capital punishment law have been sent for study and re-evaluation during next year’s General Assembly session.
The bills weren’t killed outright, so Delegate C. Todd Gilbert, R-Shenandoah, wilT be back to testily to the Virginia State Crime Commission, a legislative agency that studies criminal laws.
“They’re still alive. I’ll be back in the summer to champion those causes,” Gilbert said.
Bills dealing with the capital murder statute are typically sent to the Crime Commission, said Sen. Kenneth Stolle, RVirginia Beach. Stolle chairs the Senate Courts of Justice Committee and the Crime Commission.
House Bill 1311 would make the murder of cooperating witnesses a more grave crime. Gilbert proposed it in response to the 2003 murder of Brenda Paz by members of .the MS-13 gang. Paz’s boyfriend called the hit from behind bars.
“She was killed because she was set to testify against her boyfriend, who was the ringleader of the MS-13 set,” Gilbert said. “They informed her she was being killed because she was a rat.”
House Bill 782 would have eliminated the triggerman rule, which says that only the killer, and not an equally guilty accomplice, can be put to death. It was co-sponsored by Sen. Mark Obenshain, R-Harrisonburg, a member of the Senate Courts of Justice Committee.
The bill addresses a unique situation in Virginia law, Gilbert told the committee, which sent both bills to be studied. It was a response to the trial of the Lee Boyd Malvo and John Muhammad, who terrorized the Washington and Richmond areas with a series of sniper attacks that killed 10 people in 2002.
While Malvo pulled the trigger, Muhammad would have escaped the death penalty — except for a clause that classified his crime as terrorism.
Both HB 1311 and HB 782 passed the House of Delegates with broad support in February.
The Crime Commission has a mixed membership of nine legislators, three gubernatorial appointees and members of the
See GILBERT, Page A6
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