Rethinking Capital Punishment
Professors at the University of Richmond School of Law are playing a pivotal role in reshaping the national dialogue about the death penalty. Their efforts were spotlighted last December, when President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of nearly all federal death row inmates. Among the 37 individuals who will now serve life sentences without the possibility of parole was James Roane, whose case has been a focus of Richmond Law’s advocacy.
Sentenced to death in 1993 for a series of gang-related crimes, Roane has benefitted from the efforts of two professors at Richmond Law. “I visited James regularly through Chaplain Services of Virginia in the early 90s,” said Professor Julie McConnell, Director of the Jeanette Lipman Children's Defense Clinic, recalling her early advocacy for Roane. “He was so young when he received the death penalty.”
Decades later, after serving thirty years on federal death row, Roane contacted Richmond Law’s Institute for Actual Innocence Clinic with a request to review his case. Professor Mary Kelly Tate, who leads the clinic, agreed to do so.
“Mr. Roane was a native of Richmond, and despite having wonderful federal public defenders, he believed that having someone from this area on his team would be beneficial to his case,” she said. “He knew about my clinic’s extensive success with presidential commutations.”
Tate’s goal was as clear as it was simple: to determine whether or not Roane was guilty of capital murder. After an extensive review of the facts of the case, and an in-depth interview with Roane in person on federal death row in Terre Haute, Indiana in the summer of 2023, she decided to petition the White House for his commutation. This request was granted in December.
“I appreciate my colleague’s continued advocacy on his behalf,” McConnell said.
Richmond Law’s commitment to justice doesn’t stop with Roane’s case. In fact, this was the clinic’s fourth victory in 2024 alone. Earlier in December, President Biden also commuted the home confinement sentence of Amber Gauch. In June, the Virginia Court of Appeals exonerated Marvin Grimm, who had spent 45 years in prison for a crime he did not commit, and in April, the 20-year sentence of Leshay Rhoton was commuted to 12.5 years.
As the law school’s clinics take a leading role advocating for clients impacted by capital sentencing, Professor Corinna Lain is leading the discussion about how capital punishment plays out. In her new book, “Secrets of the Killing State: the Untold Story of Lethal Injection,” which will be published in April, she pulls back the curtain on lethal injection and exposes the torturous reality of this practice.
“In the public discourse about the death penalty, people tend to ask just one question: does the defendant deserve death?” she said. “Both Professor Tate’s work and mine show that we should be asking another question too: does the state deserve to take that life? All too often, the answer is no. States cannot be trusted with the power to take the lives of their citizens.”
Capital punishment remains legal in 27 states throughout the U.S. As the nation continues to grapple with the future of the death penalty, Richmond Law remains a leading voice, committed to fairness, reform, and second chances.