Rachel Sutphin, the daughter of Eric Sutphin, the sheriff’s deputy who was one of the two people William Morva killed in 2006, is asking Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe to commute Morva’s sentence to life without parole. Morva is scheduled to be executed tomorrow, Thursday, at 9 p.m. (EST).
The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that Sutphin emailed media outlets today with a statement that she has been a lifelong opponent of the death penalty, and doesn’t want Morva executed.
“I am against the death penalty for religious and moral reasons. I have fought and will continue to fight for clemency for all death row inmates until Virginia declares the death penalty unconstitutional,” Sutphin wrote, according to the paper.
Morva suffers from delusional disorder, a disease that makes him believe things that aren’t true. It’s a serious mental illness, similar to schizophrenia, and it caused him to commit two murders for which Virginia now wants to execute him.
As a boy, friends and relatives described Morva as sweet and sensitive. But as he grew older, he became increasingly irrational and consumed by delusions. He dropped out of high school in his senior year and eventually claimed to live in the Virginia woods.
Arrested in 2005, and held in a county jail for a year awaiting trial on attempted robbery charges, his mental condition deteriorated even further.
In 2006, after receiving medical treatment at a local hospital, Morva disarmed the deputy escorting him, and fatally shot a hospital security guard during his escape. The following day he shot and killed Eric Sutphin. He was sentenced to death in June 2008.
The jury was never fully informed of the extent of Morva’s mental illness. In fact, trial experts told jurors he simply had “odd beliefs” and that he didn’t suffer delusions. (Just before he was sentenced to death Morva told the court he was renouncing his “slave name” and was now to be called “Nemo.”)
Thousands of people from around the world have emailed, tweeted and called Gov. Terry McAuliffe to ask that he commute Morva’s sentence to life without parole. Two United Nations representatives, a group of Virginia state lawmakers, newspapers including the Washington Post and the LA Post Examiner, and U.S. News & World Report, have all called for his commutation because of his severe mental illness.
Now one of his victim’s daughters is calling for the governor to do the right thing, and show the rest of the world that in Virginia, at least, it is considered immoral to execute the mentally ill.
