RICHMOND —
Virginia officials executed a man convicted of killing a hospital security
guard and a sheriff’s deputy despite the pleas of advocates who said the crimes
resulted from severe mental illness.
William Morva,
35, was pronounced dead at 9:15 p.m. EDT July 6 after a lethal injection at
Greensville correctional center.
Lisa Kinney,
director of communications for the Virginia Department of Corrections, said the
execution was carried out without complications.
Virginia Gov.
Terry McAuliffe announced hours before the execution that he would not block
the death sentence from being carried out despite appeals from attorneys,
mental health advocates and state lawmakers that Morva’s mental illness made it
impossible for him to distinguish between delusions and reality.
As the execution
neared, the Virginia Catholic Conference reissued its statement explaining the
Catholic Church’s stance against the death penalty.
Bishop Francis X.
DiLorenzo of Richmond and Bishop Michael F. Burbidge or Arlington, representing
the conference, said people of God “are led to a profound respect for
every human, from its very beginning until its natural end.”
“Knowing
that the state can protect itself in ways other than through the death penalty,
we have repeatedly asked that the practice be abandoned Our broken world cries
out for justice, not the additional violence of vengeance the death penalty
will exact,” the statement said.
Jeff Caruso,
executive director of the Virginia Catholic Conference, said the release was
timed for Morva’s execution.
“In light of
the execution, we wanted to reaffirm the church’s teaching on the death penalty
and continue to deepen that awareness of the church’s teaching on the death
penalty,” he said.
The bishops’
statement expressed “profound sorrow” and offered prayers for
“all victims of violence, whose lives have been brutally cut short, and
their loved ones, whose grief continues.”
“We pray for
a change of heart and a spirit of remorse and conversion on the part of the
perpetrators of this violence and ask God to give all of us the grace to work
for peace and respect for all life in our communities and our
commonwealth,” the statement added.
Morva was
convicted of killing a hospital security guard and a sheriff’s deputy after
escaping from custody in 2006. His execution was the first in the state under a
new protocol that makes more of the lethal injection procedure secret, The
Associated Press reported.
The execution
also was the second in Virginia this year. A third person set to be executed in
April had his sentence commuted by McAuliffe and is serving a sentence of life
in prison without the possibility of parole.
Since 1976 when
states began rewriting laws to allow the use of the death penalty Virginia has
executed 113 people, the second most of any state. Only Texas has executed more
people — 542 — in the same period, according to the Death Penalty Information
Center.
