I'm opposed to the death penalty anyway, but I have two very specific concerns about this bill.

1. When Virginia first adopted the current death penalty statute in 1977, it did so with reluctance. Speaker A. L. Philpott -- a true conservative in the sense that he was leery of government exercise of power -- made sure that the number of crimes that were death-eligible was fairly small, for two reasons. He wanted the death penalty to be reserved for the worst of the worst, not just the bad. And he wanted it to be reserved for those for whom guilt was not likely to be an issue. If someone is charged with murder in the course of a robbery, it is fairly easy to know when that crime has been committed. It is fairly easy to decide that the person who pulled the trigger intended death or at least serious bodily harm. It is not clear if two people go into a store and one person shoots the clerk whether the other person intended that anyone die. We are opening the door here to a much larger number of people who will be subject to the death penalty.

2. Other states that do not have a triggerman rule have extremely complex rules about how the state has to prove the constitutionally required mental state to justify a death sentence. We have been blessed to avoid that furor, but now this bill steps us right into the middle of it.