December 29, 2017

Just before completing his term as governor, Gov. Terry McAuliffe commuted the death sentence of William Joseph Burns. Courts had found Mr. Burns too mentally ill to undergo testing to prove intellectual disability—a condition that would prohibit Mr. Burns from receiving the death penalty. The commutation of Mr. Burns' sentence ended this legal limbo. He will now serve life without parole.

In 2000, a Shenandoah County jury sentenced Mr. Burns to death for a 1998 rape and murder. But in 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Atkins v. Virginia that executing people with intellectual disabilities violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. After Atkins, the Virginia Supreme Court and Shenandoah Circuit Court exchanged Mr. Burns' case multiple times. Mr. Burns could not receive the death penalty if he was intellectually disabled under Atkins, but the Virginia trial court found he was too mentally ill to undergo testing to prove intellectual disability under Atkins. "As of now, there is no lawful way to impose the death sentence on Mr. Burns," Governor McAuliffe said, "And there is no clear path for that ever being possible."

Many people worked on Mr. Burns' case over the years. Before his sentence was commuted, he was being assisted by attorneys Jon Sheldon, Joe Flood, Kristina Joyner-Leslie, and the staff of the Virginia Capital Representation Resource Center.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, McAulliffe's commutation of Burns' sentence is the ninth time a Virginia governor has granted clemency to a death row inmate since the death penalty was brought back in 1977.

For more information, see: http://www.richmond.com/news/virginia/government-politics/mcauliffe-commutes-death-sentence-of-killer-found-mentally-incompetent-to/article_eea2ba62-8575-5d4f-9684-3f7a815ff6f2.html