William Morva killed two men. His execution shows no death penalty case is easy.

[Mosby]

Last night, Virginia executed William Morva for the 2006 murders of a sheriff’s deputy and a hospital security guard. Morva killed his victims while serving time in a county jail for attempted armed robbery. He had premeditated his escape.

Few people wrote about the case in the weeks leading up to Morva’s execution. I suspect that’s because as death penalty cases go, this one at first blush seems pretty sound. There’s no doubt that Morva killed two men. And there’s little doubt that he is a potential threat to public safety.

But there is no such thing as a routine execution. A criminal-justice system built and run by flawed human beings will always be flawed. Because an execution is the ultimate punishment, and because it’s irreversible, every state killing presents some profound moral quandaries. This one is no different.

Morva suffered from severe mental illness. In his statement denying Morva clemency, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) pointed out that while the three mental health professionals who evaluated Morva at trial found signs of mental illness, all three found that “he did not suffer from any condition that would have prevented him from committing these acts consciously and fully understanding their consequences.” But as Liliana Segura reported for the Intercept, it appears that those evaluations were based on incomplete reviews of Morva’s history. (Disclosure: Segura is my wife.) In interviews with Morva’s friends and family, along with reviews of letters he has written over the years, Segura paints a portrait of a man who was spiraling into delusional behavior well before he committed his crimes.

-snip-

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2017/07/07/lessons-from-the-execution-of-william-morva/

[Hassin Bin Sober]

1. It's a sick society that kills seriously mentally ill people.