Monday, December 06, 2004

Files on those who have been executed by Virginia

Yesterday, the Richmond paper had this very interesting article on what Virginia's archives tell about persons executed by Virginia in the early 20th century.

A related article is this one about a Martinsville case of seven men executed for rape in 1951.

Another related article is this one with racial statistics going back before the Civil War.

Somewhere in one of these articles is the proposition, previously unknown to me, that early in the 1900s, Virginia and other Southern states made the criminal process in murder cases go faster in part to avoid lynchings, which is a horrible thought.

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