Death As a Bargaining Chip: Plea Bargaining and the Future of Virginia's Death Penalty

Virginia now averages less than a single death sentence each year, 1 a far cry from its not-too-distant history as the second most active death penalty state in the nation. 2 The numbers alone tempt us to forecast the death of Virginia’s death penalty: a death by disuse. But those numbers leave much of the story untold. The plummeting number of death sentences is only the diminishing tip of a larger, more stable iceberg of capital case litigation. That iceberg is melting very slowly, if at all.