OPINION:
On Feb. 7, Virginia’s Senate Judiciary Committee approved legislation (SB 378) that would let some murderers seek release from prison after less than a fourth of their sentence. This so-called “second-look” legislation has already been adopted in the District of Columbia and elsewhere.
It allows killers currently serving life without parole to be released after 10 or 15 years.
The law allows judges to cut sentences for criminals or release them after they have served 10 or 15 years — no matter how awful the crime they committed. Even if a murderer has been sentenced to life in prison for killing several people, he can be let out if he convinces a judge that he has been rehabilitated.
The legislation currently working its way through the Virginia General Assembly would let inmates who committed even the most violent crimes such as murder seek release after just 10 years in prison if they committed the crime before age 25, or after 15 years in prison if they committed their crime after turning 25. By comparison, Washington’s law allows only people who committed their crimes before they turned 25 to seek release and only after they have served 15 years in prison.
In short, the Virginia bill would allow most criminals serving life sentences to seek release; the Washington law lets only a minority of criminals serving life sentences seek release. Even so, Washington’s law made 583 violent criminals (including many murderers and rapists) eligible for early release. The District’s law is so extreme that even the liberal Washington Post criticized it in 2019.
Supporters of this legislation have noted that neighboring Maryland has historically permitted judges to reduce many sentences. Consequently, Maryland has a violent crime rate of more than double Virginia’s.
Virginia’s Fairfax County has a lot in common with Maryland’s Montgomery County. The two counties border each other, have similar cultures and had a similar crime rate back in the 1970s. Yet by this century, Fairfax County ended up with a violent crime rate of less than half Montgomery County. Experts attributed that to Virginia’s tougher sentences and its abolishing parole for violent felons in the 1990s.
Virginia’s longer sentences have paid off in its low crime rate, making it one of America’s safest states. Virginia’s violent crime rate is only half the national average. The Commonwealth has the lowest violent crime rate of any southeastern state and lower than all neighboring states.
Not coincidentally, studies show longer prison sentences deter many crimes from being committed, both by people who have never committed a crime before and by repeat offenders.
Under the Virginia legislation, judges, rather than parole boards, will be able to release offenders. Parole boards are more equitable, applying the same standards to all offenders. Second-look sentencing leaves decisions in the hands of individual judges with widely varying views applying widely varying and personal criteria.
The legislation gives no weight to deterrence. It directs judges to consider whether the offender remains dangerous, including elements such as “rehabilitation demonstrated by the petitioner” and “the petitioner’s disciplinary record while incarcerated.” But the legislation doesn’t tell judges to consider whether the offender needs to remain in prison to deter other people from committing similar crimes. Nor is the severity of the offense a factor in reducing an inmate’s sentence.
Supporters of SB 378 argue that people age out of crime and thus can be released after they’ve spent years in prison. But sometimes, murderers kill again after being paroled. One example is serial killer Kenneth McDuff. At the age of 19, after being paroled, Mr. McDuff killed three people. Many years later, after being paroled yet again, he murdered a dozen or so more people.
Some murderers keep killing, even at an advanced age. At the age of 76, Albert Flick killed a woman, stabbing her at least 11 times while her sons watched. He had previously been imprisoned from 1979 to 2004 for killing his wife.
The District of Columbia has a violent crime rate nearly five times Virginia’s. It is inexplicable why anyone in the Commonwealth would want to mimic any part of the District’s approach to criminality. Nevertheless, some liberal legislators want to make Virginia more like the District of Columbia. Virginia voters and their representatives should reject any legislation — like the second-look legislation — that is pro-criminal, that reduces deterrence, that increases the potential for recidivism and that makes citizens and the Commonwealth less safe.
• Hans Bader is a lawyer in Washington specializing in constitutional and Freedom of Information Act lawsuits.
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