Virginia appears poised to become the 23rd US state and the first in the former secessionist South to abolish the death penalty, after its senators passed a law on Wednesday.
The House of Delegates, where Democrats are in the majority, has yet to decide.
If his elected officials approve the law, Democratic Governor Ralph Northam has indicated he will sign it.
"
The Senate vote is a turning point for Virginia, it is a repudiation of a long and violent history
" which began in 1608, commented for AFP Michael Stone, director of the association Virginians for Alternatives to the Death penalty.
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That year, European settlers in Jamestown, in what would become the state of Virginia, carried out what is considered the first execution on American soil, that of a captain accused of spying.
Since then, Virginia has been the US territory with the highest number of executions, with a total of 1,391 men and women executed, according to the Information Center on the Death Penalty (DPIC).
This border state of the capital Washington, with conservative traditions, once housed the capital of the Confederate States and its application of the death penalty is linked to its slavery past, with a majority of African-Americans among those executed.
Its possible renunciation of the death penalty therefore takes on a particular meaning, at a time when the United States is engaged in a deep reflection on its racist past.
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It will have escaped no one that the States with the most lynchings are those which have supported the death penalty the most
", underlined during the debates the black democratic senator Mamie Locke.
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I do not think that this law is the appropriate answer
" to the errors of the past, for his part estimated his Republican colleague Mark Obenshain for whom "
the worst crimes deserve the capital punishment
".
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The death penalty is legal in the United States but has declined in law and in practice for about ten years.
22 states have already abolished it and three (California, Oregon, Pennsylvania) are observing a moratorium.
In 2020, states suspended executions because of the Covid-19 pandemic, for fear of spreading the virus.
"Only" seven convicts were executed by state justice.
Going against the grain, however, Donald Trump's administration has resumed federal executions, which had been interrupted for 17 years, and put to death 13 convicts between July and his departure from the White House.
This unprecedented series should not continue, his successor Joe Biden has promised to work to abolish the federal death penalty.