Williamsburg prosecutor Nate Green said petitioners would include those who committed “the most egregious crimes” and that if Virginia adopted second-look legislation, victims would have to “relive these horrors” due to inmates’ petitions for early release.Īdvocates of second-look laws argue that “most people age out of criminal behavior over time,” with some falsely claiming that inmates can safely be released by their late 30s. While judges might reject most petitions for release by inmates with murder convictions, court hearings about the petitions would reopen old wounds for crime victims, who might end up opposing such petitions, over and over again. It’s the sentence they deserved.” Inmates could petition for release regardless of what crimes they committed before going to prison, including serial killers and serial rapists who threatened to kill their victims. While proponents of this law consider a 10-year sentence for any crime ‘extreme,’ I doubt that most Virginians would agree, especially when it comes to murderers. As Criminal Justice Legal Foundation President Michael Rushford noted in the Washington Times, “Criminals who get sentenced to more than 15 years are typically the state’s most violent offenders, including those convicted of murder…the only felony that generally carries a sentence of over 10 years is murder…So the primary beneficiaries of Virginia’s ‘second-look’ law will be murderers. The bill would theoretically have applied to all types of offenders, but in practice, it is mainly murderers who would be eligible to file petitions for release or reduced sentences under the bill, because inmates serving very long sentences tend to be murderers. As the Supreme Court has recognized, criminal laws incarcerate offenders not just to rehabilitate them, but also for other reasons, such as to deter crimes by other people who have yet to commit a crime, as well as to incapacitate dangerous offenders and to impose retribution on an offender regardless of whether the offender repents after committing the crime. But it does not list many factors that weigh in favor of continued incarceration, such as the need for deterrence or retribution. Most of the factors tend to favor inmates, such as the passage of time since the offense, “the decline in criminal behavior as individuals grow older ,” and how inmates mature while in prison. Shawn Weneta, a lobbyist who drafted Virginia’s second-look legislation, boasted in 2022 that even under a low-ball estimate, the bill would empty “2 more Virginia prisons.” That prediction seems plausible, because the factors the bill lists for judges to consider in whether to release an inmate are slanted in favor of release. But thousands of Virginia inmates have been incarcerated for more than 15 years and thus could petition for release under the bill. The bill does not explicitly require judges to reduce any particular inmate’s sentence. Unlike Oregon’s second-look legislation, which does not allow killers who committed “aggravated murder” to be released, the Virginia second-look legislation would allow petitions for sentence reductions by inmates of all kinds, including serial killers, child-killers, and cop-killers. But no such finding is required under the Virginia second-look legislation just introduced. Washington, DC’s municipal second-look law requires a finding “that the defendant is not a danger to the safety of any person or the community” before a sentence can be reduced. Such findings are required as a safeguard by “second-look” laws in other jurisdictions, such as the District of Columbia. The new bill also allows violent criminals to be released without a formal finding that they are no longer a danger to the victim or the victim’s family, or to the community. But this time, even safeguards found in the original legislation, such as that inmates exhibit mostly good behavior in prison before being released, have been removed - inmates no longer need to meet such “behavioral standards” to be released. It is still known as the “second-look” bill. In 2023, this bill has been introduced again, as SB 842.
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