nancy botwin
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I'm in Virginia. Our procedure is apparently very different. Here, a prosecutor can either take a charge directly to a grand jury or they can opt for a preliminary hearing where a judge would decide whether to send the case to the grand jury.
Here, you would be charged with either 1st or 2nd Degree murder or with capital murder. Only capital murder charges can result in a death penalty and the crime has to meet certain criteria before someone can be charged with capital murder. And the prosecutor would be called a commonwealth's attorney. LOL
We had a case in my home county years ago where a young boy was tortured with a stun gun, raped and killed. The criteria at the time included murder in the commission of a rape, but only for adults. The prosecutor was able to charge capital murder only because the murderer took the boy's shoes, because murder in the commission of a robbery was included in capital crimes.
The law was later changed to include rape of someone under 14 because of that case, later again changed to murder of someone under 14.
oh ok-- I just read you on the other thread-- I missed this.
That example is terrible!!, but interesting--wow. It does a good job to show how VA carved out those special victim exceptions. Yikes. Thanks for the information!