VIRGINIA (USA): GOVERNOR SCRAPS ELECTRIC CHAIR LAW

April 11, 2016: Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) has not signed HB 815 that would have given the state power to put people to death by electric chair. Instead, he added an amendment permitting the state to hire a pharmacy to secretly make a special batch of lethal injection drugs.
McAuliffe had until midnight Sunday to veto the bill, which would make it easier for Virginia to execute people with the electric chair if lethal injection drugs become unavailable.
The bill would have become effective law on July 1 had he not taken action.
The governor had more than a month to consider the bill after state senators approved it on March 11.
The Democratic governor has close ties to Hillary Clinton, and the decision to facilitate the return of the electric chair would have reverberated on the presidential campaign trail.
Last week, 300 Virginia religious leaders wrote a joint letter urging the governor to veto the bill and prevent the compulsory return of a "barbarous relic" that kills with "unspeakable cruelty".
Virginia has indicated that it has only 2 vials left of compounded pentobarbital, a sedative often used in the triple lethal injection, and its own protocols require it to have 3 vials available for any execution.
Virginia is currently 1 of 8 states that permits the electric chair to be used as a legal method of execution. All of the states but Tennessee relegate it to a backup method to be used in the event that lethal injection is ruled unconstitutional or if an inmate requests it.
In 2014, Tennessee brought back the electric chair as an option for the state - rather than the inmate - to select. But the state suspended executions within a year due to legal challenges contending that state-sanctioned executions, whether by lethal injection or electric chair, constitute cruel and unusual punishment.
In the past 15 years, state supreme courts in both Georgia and Nebraska have determined the electric chair violates state laws against cruel and unusual punishment. (Source: Huffington Post, The Guardian, 11/04/2016)