Mark Whitfield feels like he is doing a life sentence. He’s just not incarcerated.
His 9-year-old daughter, Markiya Dickson, enjoying a Memorial Day community cookout with her family, was petting a pony when she was killed by a stray bullet during a shootout at a South Richmond park in May 2019. An 11-year-old boy who was playing tag nearby was wounded.
A playground is now named for Markiya at Carter Jones Park, where she was killed.
Two of the shooters were sentenced to 33 years, and a third was sentenced to 22 years.
Her killers will eventually be released. That’s why Whitfield has testified against legislation that would allow some prisoners to petition for early release, a bill commonly known as “second look.”
“I can’t get my daughter back. I can’t take her to school. I can’t watch her grow up — but (criminals) deserve a second look?” Whitfield said. “My daughter can’t get a second look.”
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Senate Bill 427, which lawmakers carried over this year for consideration in 2025, would have let inmates petition a judge for reconsideration of their sentences after they have served 15, 20 or 25 years, depending on their crimes.
A judge who decided a petition lacks merit could dismiss the inmate’s bid in chambers rather than continuing the process and reaching out to victims. The victims would have the ability to stop the process should they oppose the perpetrator’s case. If a petition advances to the point of victims being contacted and they don’t respond, it would also stop the process.
Inmates would also be limited to filing only twice, with three years between their attempts.
The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Charlottesville, has pitched it as a beacon of hope for inmates — something to strive for and a measure that would encourage good behavior. At the same time, he has had to fight to win over colleagues wary of being viewed as “soft on crime.” He has had some success among Republicans.
Del. Wren Williams, R-Patrick, who supported the bill this year after voting against last year’s version, called the tiers of sentences in the measure, and levels of input that include victims, a “balance between the individuals who are getting a ‘second look’ and protecting the sort of mental and emotional state of the victims.”
Hanging onto hope
It’s hope that fuels Richmond resident Sheba Williams’ (no relation to Del. Williams) support of the bill. While Whitfield has spoken against second look bills when they have come before the legislature, Williams has spoken in support.
“There are people who change and grow and I have been able to witness it,” she said.
Williams is the director of Nolef Turns, a nonprofit that provides resources for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people. Through her advocacy, she says she has met people who are getting their lives back on track.
Growing up, both of her parents were incarcerated. While her mother’s sentence was brief, she witnessed the challenges having a felony on a record can create for someone.
Williams also knows the pain of gun violence. She lost her nephew Te’Von Cook, who was killed in 2018. Another passenger in the car with Cook on the night of his death had gotten into an argument with the shooter, who was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to five years in prison.
“It’s hard,” Williams said of her multiple windows into the criminal justice system. “But I believe in accountability and forgiveness.”
This is the third year second look legislation has gone before the legislature.
Del. Wren Williams is among a handful of Republicans to have voted in favor of second look bills over the years to include Sens. David Suetterlein, R-Roanoke County, and Bill Stanley, R-Franklin, as well as Del. Carrie Coyner, R-Chesterfield, and then-Sens. Siobahn Dunnavant, R-Henrico, and Emmett Hanger, R-Augusta.
“I’m a believer that people can be redeemed and rehabilitated,” said Coyner, who sponsored the House version of “second look” in 2022.
While the measures have been able to clear the Senate, there has not been enough support to get the bill to the governor’s desk.
‘Parole is radioactive’
Virginia eliminated most types of discretionary parole in 1995 amid a national “truth-in-sentencing” movement in response to an increase in violent crime. That move, during George Allen’s governorship, had bipartisan support.
Parolees had to regularly meet with a parole officer and stay on the right side of the law. That option was mostly removed in 1995.
Virginia now has one of the lowest parole rates in the country. Only juveniles and the elderly are eligible. Just a handful are granted the right every year, with thousands of parole-eligible inmates remaining incarcerated.
Allen believes the bipartisan vote at the time is part of why parole has remained as it has.
Meanwhile, criminal justice advocates say it’s an unnecessary cost to taxpayers to keep prisons so full. Lawmakers in support of the second look bill see it as a way to lower costs without fully reinstating parole.
It costs an average $42,000 per inmate each year to incarcerate, according to the Virginia Department of Corrections. And, as inmates age, they can cost as much as $100,000 annually due to their medical needs, according to the most recent department report from 2022.
“The word ‘parole’ is radioactive right now,” said Shawn Weneta, a policy strategist with Virginia’s chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Weneta has worked with various organizations to provide insights to lawmakers on the second look proposal over the years.
Deeds, a 32-year legislative veteran who first voted in support of abolishing discretionary parole in the 1990s, is now carrying a second look bill nearly 30 years later.
“The whole idea of second chances and redemption was lost in the parole argument,” he told the Richmond Times-Dispatch last summer. “But we’re, I think, we’re getting back there.”
One of the bill’s staunch opponents has been Attorney General Jason Miyares, who said he considers the bill to be “backdoor parole.”
A pillar of Miyares’ 2021 election campaign focused on the early releases of primarily geriatric inmates during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. A report from his office in early 2023 said the previous parole board under then-Chair Adrianne Bennett had violated board policies and state law and had failed to contact local prosecutors and victims when inmates were paroled.
This year, he also requested a bill that could have further reduced eligibility of geriatric parole, though it did not pass.
One of the only other methods for earlier release is earned sentence credits — where inmates who participate in training programs that advocates say will help them successfully reenter society can earn credits toward sentence reductions. While an effort to expand the program passed in 2020, Gov. Glenn Youngkin put language in a previous state budget to block the change in 2022. Last month, Miyares penned a letter to lawmakers asking them to keep limits on earned sentence credits.
Through this recent legislative session, Deeds’ bill was workshopped to give more layers to stop a petition if a judge finds it lacks merit or if a prosecutor or a victim say “no.”
But Miyares pointed to potential problems he can see despite the “good intent” he believes those adjustments had.
He explained that if a petition gets to the point of victim contact, that alone could be retraumatizing — something some crime victims noted in their testimony before the legislature.
And should they decline — therefore ending a petition — they might be contacted by family of the offender or special interest groups with pleas to change their mind. Or they might face harassment, he speculated.
“I actually think that that puts the victims in an even worse position as well by giving them the final say — so it actually puts enormous pressure on them,” Miyares said.
A member of his office spoke against the bill when lawmakers considered the measure, and Miyares also took to social media to critique it during this year’s legislative session.
Tears and tenacity
At a particularly tense legislative meeting on Jan. 31, the first few speakers — in support and opposition — took up the six minutes allotted for each side of the argument. Subsequent speakers were cut off.
That was a difficult request for some victims of crime who wanted to share their stories.
Paige O’Shaughnessy, whose husband, Timothy, was murdered over 20 years ago in Norfolk by a former colleague, continued to speak after the time limit had been reached. Michael Grey, whose 23-year-old son, Joshua, was fatally shot in 2018 while trying to sell an iPhone at an East End grocery store, was reprimanded by the committee chair, Del Vivian Watts, D-Fairfax, but was permitted to speak a little longer. After Melinda Wallin, whose 18-year-old son was fatally shot outside of her Spotsylvania County home in 2019, abided by the time limit, the commonwealth’s attorney who had prosecuted the case asked for more time.
“Her son died in her arms and she just wants one minute,” he asked.
After a pause, Watts followed with: “Next speaker please.”
With 60 days this year for lawmakers to get through thousands of bills, committee chairs often adhere to strict time limits on public comment.
The Republican Party of Virginia, Miyares and conservative groups later shared clips of the exchanges on social media, with rebukes to Watts and other Democrats. Miyares also wrote a letter to victims in opposition to the bill and invited them to speak with him at his office.
A matter of time
When another version of second look legislation failed in the House this year, Deeds suspected his would, too.
“Some folks can say ‘you’re soft on criminals’ — that’s one of the arguments against this bill,” Deeds said. “I think if the House didn’t want to vote on this bill, in a non-election year, their likelihood of voting on election year is very small.”
Though the Senate serves four-year terms, the House is up for election every two years. Immediately after the 2025 legislative session concludes next February, incumbents and challengers will begin campaigning for House seats that will be decided that November. Virginians will also elect a new governor next year.
“If we have a Democratic governor and we pick up some (House) seats, I think the bill will have a better shot,” Deeds said.
Sheba Williams is frustrated at the outcome, but she’s not giving up hope.
“Everybody is worried about ad campaigns in November, but we have real bodies behind this bill and real families affected by this bill,” she said.
And Markiya’s father, Mark Whitfield, will be back to testify if the bill returns.
“I feel like you get your time, you do your time. If your time is extensive, it’s because you did something real bad,” he said.
“I believe that some people are sitting in prison that need to be free, that some of the sentencing is outrageous — but to apply this to rapists and killers is opening up a can of worms.”