Last Man Executed in Virginia: William Morva Killed Two Officers During a Severe Mental Episode…

July 6th, 2017. 9:15 p.m. Greensville Correctional Center, Virginia. William Morva’s heart stopped beating. 35 years old, strapped to a gurnie, lethal chemicals flooding through his veins, his eyes staring at a ceiling he would never see again. The state of Virginia had just executed its final death row inmate.

 Four years later, they would abolish capital punishment forever, making William Morva the last person Virginia would ever kill in the name of justice. But this isn’t a story about justice. This is a story about failure. Two men died horrific deaths. Derek McFarland, a hospital security guard running to save a colleague. Eric Sutfin, a sheriff’s deputy with twin daughters, shot on a bike trail.

 Both were just doing their jobs when they crossed paths with a barefoot survivalist who lived in the woods, ate raw meat, and believed the world was conspiring to destroy him. The jury that sentenced William to death heard he had odd beliefs and attitudes. They never heard the truth, that his brain had been rotting from the inside out for years, that he couldn’t tell reality from the nightmare his mind created, that every system designed to catch people like him had failed spectacularly.

Here’s the question nobody wants to answer. Were these murders preventable years before they happened. This is the story of William Morval, a man who unraveled in slow motion while everyone looked away. A tragedy written in missed opportunities, wrong diagnosis, and a justice system that executed a man for crimes his untreated illness compelled him to commit.

 Hit that subscribe button because what you’re about to hear will make you question everything you think you know about mental illness, murder, and who’s really responsible when someone’s mind betrays them. June 2006, Blackburg, Virginia. William Charles Morva was born February 9th, 1982 in Midlotheian, Virginia. His father Charles worked as a substitute teacher.

His mother, Elizabeth, tried to create a stable home in their middle-class neighborhood near Richmond. But inside that home, things were difficult. William’s relationship with his father was strained from an early age. Charles was critical, emotionally distant. The kind of father who made his son feel like nothing he did was ever good enough.

 William grew up believing something was fundamentally wrong with him. By high school, friends noticed something was off. Christina Gardner attended Blackburg High School with William. She watched him struggle with something none of them could name. There was an emptiness in him, a disconnection that went deeper than typical teenage angst.

 William wasn’t just moody or rebellious. He was drifting away from something essential, away from the shared reality everyone else inhabited. At 18 in 2000, William dropped out of high school. No diploma, no clear path forward, just a growing sense that the world didn’t make sense anymore and he didn’t belong in it. These were early warning signs.

Symptoms of a brain beginning to malfunction. But in a culture that dismisses mental illness as weirdness, William slipped through every crack. His family saw something was wrong. But what do you do when your son is just odd? When he’s not violent? Not clearly psychotic, just off. American mental health law makes it nearly impossible to force treatment on someone who doesn’t want it.

 And William didn’t think he needed help, so his family watched helplessly as their son drifted further from reality. April 2004 changed everything. Charles Morva died of cancer. Whatever fragile stability William had maintained shattered completely. His father’s death didn’t just grieve him. It broke something fundamental in his brain.

 The last anchor connecting him to reality snapped. The barefoot years began. [clears throat] William stopped wearing shoes entirely. Winter, summer, rain, snow, [clears throat] it didn’t matter. He walked the streets of Blackburg and bare feet. His souls grew thick and calloused like an animal’s paw. He started eating only raw meat, berries, and pine cones.

not as a dietary choice or some trendy paleo experiment. William genuinely believed this was necessary for survival, that civilization was collapsing, that he needed to prepare for an apocalypse only he could see coming. He moved into the woods full-time. The forests around Virginia Tech became his home.

 He built makeshift shelters. He spent nights under the stars. He lived like a survivalist from another century. The Virginia Tech community noticed him. Of course, students would see him emerging from the treeine barefoot and disheveled, talking to himself. Faculty members encountered him on campus, ranting about government conspiracies and the end times.

 He became a fixture, the forest guy, the barefoot conspiracy theorist. Some students found him fascinating, others [clears throat] were afraid of him. Most just dismissed him as the local eccentric. Nobody recognized they were watching untreated psychosis in real time. William’s friends from before the transformation watched him deteriorate.

They saw him spending entire weeks in the wilderness. They heard him talking about things that made no sense, elaborate conspiracies, threats that didn’t exist, dangers only he could perceive. His speech became disconnected. His thoughts jumped from topic to topic without logic. He would look through people instead of at them, seeing enemies and threats invisible to everyone else.

This wasn’t eccentricity or a lifestyle choice. William Morva’s brain was creating an alternate reality that felt more real to him than the actual world. But here’s the tragedy. Nobody could force William to get help. He didn’t think he was sick. In his mind, he was the only sane person in an insane world. Everyone else was blind to the dangers he could see so clearly.

 The American mental health system has a fundamental flaw. Unless someone is in immediate danger to themselves or others, you can’t force treatment. And William, despite his obvious deterioration, hadn’t hurt anyone yet. So, he continued his descent into madness. And everyone who loved him could only watch. August 18th, 2005, Blackburg, Virginia.

William Morva and another young man approached the Blackburg Deli Mart after closing time. They wore masks. They carried weapons. In William’s delusional mind, this wasn’t robbery. This was gathering resources for the collapse he believed was imminent. But the store was already locked. The clerk inside saw them through the window.

 Saw the masks, saw the weapons. She did exactly what she should have done. She called the police. Blackburg police arrested William later that night and charged him with attempted armed robbery. This was the moment. The moment when mental health professionals should have seen everything. When a comprehensive psychiatric evaluation should have revealed the delusional disorder consuming his brain.

 When treatment could have started. When medication could have helped William see reality clearly for the first time in years. Instead, William received a routine psychiatric evaluation. quick, superficial, designed to determine if he was competent to stand trial, not to actually understand what was happening in his mind.

 The psychiatrist diagnosed him with schizotypal personality disorder. It’s a real condition. People with schizotypal personality disorder have odd beliefs, eccentric behaviors, unusual perceptions, but critically they generally know what’s real and what’s not. They can distinguish their unusual thoughts from reality.

 William Morva couldn’t make that distinction anymore. But the evaluating psychiatrist didn’t catch it. That single misdiagnosis sealed the fate of three people. William sat in Montgomery County Jail awaiting trial for attempted robbery. No antiscychotic medication, no treatment for the delusions consuming his mind, no intervention that might have prevented what was about to happen.

 Instead, his paranoia intensified behind bars. Jail is difficult for anyone. For someone experiencing severe delusions, it’s hell. William became increasingly convinced the deputies wanted to kill him, that he was in mortal danger every moment he remained in custody, that the armed officers weren’t just guards, they were conspirators planning his murder.

None of this was real. But to William, it was absolutely terrifyingly real. For 12 months, William sat in that cell while his untreated brain built increasingly elaborate conspiracies. The pressure built like steam in a sealed container. Something had to give. August 20th, 2006, nearly a year after his arrest.

 William complained of pain in his ankle and wrist. The jail had a responsibility to provide medical care. So, deputies transported him to Montgomery Regional Hospital for treatment. This happened all the time. Routine medical transports. Take the inmate to the hospital. Get him checked out. Bring him back. Nothing about this trip seemed dangerous.

 Deputy Russell Quzinberry was assigned to guard William during the appointment. A boring assignment. Stand around. Make sure the inmate doesn’t cause trouble. Fill out paperwork. Go home. at the end of your shift. During the examination, William asked to use the bathroom, a routine request. Inside that bathroom, William surveyed his environment the way someone planning an escape would.

 His eyes landed on the metal toilet paper container mounted to the wall. Heavy, solid, a weapon if you were desperate enough or delusional enough to use it. William ripped it from the wall. When Deputy Quasinberry was close enough, William attacked him with brutal efficiency. The metal container crashed into the deputy’s skull.

 Quzinberry collapsed. Unconcious and bleeding. William took his service weapon. In William’s fractured mind, this wasn’t assault. This wasn’t theft. This wasn’t the beginning of a murder spree. This was survival. This was self-defense against people who wanted him dead. His broken brain had convinced him that violence was his only option.

 He walked out of that bathroom with a loaded gun in a mind that couldn’t distinguish real threats from imaginary ones. Derek McFarland was 32 years old. He worked as a security guard at Montgomery Regional Hospital. It was a good job, steady pay. He kept patients safe, helped visitors find their way, responded when there was trouble.

 When Dererick heard the commotion from the bathroom area, he did what good people do. He ran toward it. Someone needed help. Maybe the deputy was hurt. Maybe a patient was in distress. Derek McFarland ran toward his own death. When he encountered William, he wasn’t seeing a security guard trying to help.

 He was seeing another enemy, another person trying to stop his escape. Another conspirator in the plot to kill him. William shot him. The bullet struck Derek McFarland in the chest. He collapsed in the hospital corridor, bleeding out on the floor of the building where he’d spent years keeping other people safe. Derek died from his wounds within minutes.

 A husband, a friend, a man who spent his working life protecting others, killed by someone who saw him as a threat. William fled through the hospital and out into the woods surrounding Blackburg, the same woods where he’d spent countless nights. The forest he knew better than most people know their own neighborhoods.

 He vanished into the trees while alarms sounded throughout the building. [clears throat] Virginia Tech went on lockdown immediately. The campus where William had been a fixture for years was now searching for him as an armed killer. Police from multiple agencies flooded the area. Blackburg police, Montgomery County Sheriff, Virginia State Police, campus security.

 Hundreds of officers fanning out across the woods. the trails, the campus buildings. They knew William was armed with Deputy Quzinberry’s weapon. They knew [clears throat] he’d already killed once. They knew he was familiar with the terrain and could disappear into wilderness that most officers barely knew.

 The manhunt stretched through the night. Helicopters circled overhead with search lights sweeping through the trees. K-9 units tracked scent trails. SWAT teams cleared buildings. Officers searched every possible hiding spot. Students locked themselves in dorm rooms. Faculty sheltered in place. The entire community held its breath. William Morva was out there somewhere, armed, dangerous, and completely disconnected from reality.

 August 21st, 2006. The manhunt continued into the morning. Corporal Eric Sutfin was 40 years old. He’d been a Montgomery County Sheriff’s deputy for 13 years. But those 13 years hadn’t been continuous. In May 2003, Eric and his partner Scott Hilton [clears throat] responded to a domestic disturbance call.

 What seemed like a routine call turned into a nightmare. The suspect opened fire. Scott Hilton died at the scene. Eric survived, but barely. That kind of trauma destroys some people permanently. Eric quit the force after the shooting. He couldn’t do it anymore. Couldn’t put on the uniform. Couldn’t carry the gun.

 couldn’t risk leaving his wife Tamara as a widow and his nine-year-old twin daughters without a father. He became a modular home salesman. The [clears throat] pay was better. The danger was zero. He could go to work and come home and never worry about whether today was the day he wouldn’t make it back. But after 6 months, something pulled him back to law enforcement.

 A sense of duty, a belief in service, a calling he couldn’t ignore, even though he knew exactly what it could cost. Eric Sutfin returned to the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Department. He chose service over safety. He chose protecting his community even though he’d already paid a terrible price once before. His wife must have been terrified.

 His daughters probably didn’t understand why Daddy chose the dangerous job again. That morning, Eric was assigned to search the Huckleberry Trail, a bike path that wound through the woods near Virginia Tech campus. It was one of many areas where William might be hiding. Eric walked that trail methodically, scanning the treeine, checking potential hiding spots, just doing his job, trying to catch a killer before anyone else got hurt. He never saw William coming.

William Morva shot Corporal Eric Sutin on that bike trail. The bullet killed him almost instantly. A husband, a father to twin 9-year-old girls, a man who had survived one shooting and chosen to return to service anyway. A man who’d spent 13 years protecting his community. Eric Sutin died in the woods doing exactly what he’d chosen to do with his life, protecting others.

 In William’s delusional mind, he wasn’t murdering a deputy sheriff. He wasn’t shooting a husband and father. He was eliminating another threat, another enemy hunting him, another conspirator trying to kill him. The threat existed only in Williams broken brain. But Eric Sutfin was just as dead. At approxima

tely 3:30 p.m. on August 21st, police found William Morva hiding in a brier patch about 150 yards from where he’d killed Eric Sutfin. [clears throat] He was shirtless, shoeless as always, covered in scratches from the brambles. He looked more like a feral animal than a human being. Officers surrounded him. They shouted commands. William didn’t resist.

 The delusions that had driven him to escape, to kill, to run, they hadn’t vanished. But in that moment, surrounded by dozens of armed officers, even William’s broken brain understood that running was impossible. The manhunt was over. Two men were dead, and William Morva’s fate was now in the hands of a justice system that still didn’t understand what was actually wrong with him.

 Commonwealth’s attorney Brad Finch announced on August 29th, 2006 that William Morva would be charged with capital murder for killing both Derek McFarland and Eric Sutfin. And Finch made one thing crystal clear. The prosecution would seek the death penalty. The evidence against William was overwhelming. He’d escaped custody.

He’d taken a deputy’s weapon. He’d shot two men. He’d been caught near the scene. He’d confessed to parts of what happened. There was no question William committed these crimes. But the question nobody was asking was this. Did William Morva understand reality when he killed those men? [clears throat] Williams trial began in March 2008 in Abington, Virginia after a change of venue due to intense publicity in the Blackburg area.

The case had dominated local news for over a year. Finding an impartial jury in Montgomery County would have been impossible. The prosecution presented their case efficiently and brutally. Here’s what William Morva did. Here’s the physical evidence proving it. Here’s testimony from witnesses. Here’s the weapon.

 Here are crime scene photos you’ll never forget. Here’s why he deserves to die. The defense tried to present evidence about Williams mental state. They had the diagnosis from his 2005 arrest, schizotypal personality disorder. They called witnesses who testified about William’s odd behavior. his years living in the woods, his strange beliefs, his disconnection from normal society.

 The jury heard that William Morva had unusual thoughts and eccentric attitudes, that he was unconventional, that his behavior was bizarre, that he lived like a survivalist. But the critical thing the jury was told either explicitly or implicitly was that William knew the difference between right and wrong, that he understood reality, that he made conscious choices.

Nobody told them William’s brain had been creating an alternate reality for years. Nobody told them he ate raw meat and lived in the woods because he genuinely believed civilization was collapsing. Nobody told them he’d stopped wearing shoes because his brain was malfunctioning. Nobody told them his crimes were committed while experiencing delusions so severe he couldn’t distinguish real threats from imaginary ones.

 The jury didn’t hear any of this because nobody knew it yet. The diagnosis was wrong. The evaluation had been superficial. The truth about William’s delusional disorder wouldn’t be discovered until years later, long after the verdict, long after it could make any difference. The trial lasted just over a week. On March 13th, 2008, the jury found William Morva guilty of two counts of capital murder.

 Then came the sentencing phase. In Virginia, juries decide whether someone convicted of capital murder receives life in prison or death. The prosecution argued William deserved death. The defense argued for life. The jury deliberated. Then they returned their verdict. Death. Judge Ray Grubs sentenced William Morva to execution and initially set the date for October 21st, 2008.

 That date would be stayed as appeals began, but the sentence was clear. William Morva would die for what he did. The case seemed closed. The system had worked exactly as designed. A killer had been caught, tried, convicted, and sentenced. Justice, by any conventional measure, had been served. But the jury hadn’t sentenced William Morva to death.

 They’d sentenced a completely different version of him. A version based on a wrong diagnosis. A man with odd beliefs who made conscious choices to kill. They never sentenced the real William Morva. The man with a delusional disorder who couldn’t distinguish reality from the nightmare his brain created. After William was sentenced to death, his appellet attorneys did what defense lawyers do in capital cases. They dug deeper.

 They ordered comprehensive psychological evaluations from multiple experts. They looked for anything that might save their client’s life. What they found was devastating. Dr. Pablo Stewart, a psychiatrist who evaluated William extensively during the appeals process, reached a dramatically different conclusion than the original evaluation.

William didn’t have schizotypo personality disorder. That diagnosis was wrong. William Morva had delusional disorder. For people unfamiliar with psychiatric diagnosis, the difference might seem subtle. Both involve unusual beliefs. Both can involve paranoia. Both are serious mental illnesses. But the difference is everything.

 People with schizotypo personality disorder have odd beliefs and eccentric behaviors, but they generally maintain contact with reality. They might believe in telepathy or have superstitious ideas, but they can usually be reasoned with. They understand that other people see the world differently. People with delusional disorder cannot be reasoned with because they cannot distinguish their delusions from reality.

 The false beliefs aren’t just ideas they entertain. They’re experienced as absolute truth. No amount of evidence can convince them otherwise because the delusions are generated by the brain itself and feel identical to real perception. William Morva’s brain was creating an alternate reality that seemed absolutely real to him.

 He wasn’t making choices based on the actual world. He was making choices based on a delusional version of the world that existed only inside his malfunctioning brain. When he attacked Deputy Quzinberry, he genuinely believed he was escaping a murder conspiracy. When he shot Derek McFarland, he saw a deadly threat that didn’t exist.

 When he killed Eric Sutin, his brain told him he was defending himself against enemies hunting him. None of this was real. But to William, it was all completely, terrifyingly, undeniably real. The jury had never heard this. They’d sentenced a man to death thinking he had odd beliefs and made bad choices.

 They never knew his brain was so broken, he literally couldn’t distinguish his delusions from reality. Williams appellet attorneys immediately began arguing that this changed everything. How can you execute someone who didn’t understand reality when they committed their crimes? How can you hold someone fully responsible when their brain was fundamentally malfunctioning? The appeals began in earnest.

June 2009, Williams attorneys appealed to the Virginia Supreme Court, arguing the new diagnosis proved he shouldn’t be executed. September 2009, the Virginia Supreme Court affirmed the conviction and death sentence in a 5-2 decision. The majority ruled that even if William had delusional disorder, he still understood that killing was wrong and chose to do it anyway.

October 2010, the United States Supreme Court denied Williams appeal without comment. April 2013, the Virginia Supreme Court dismissed Williams state habius corpus petition. April 2015, a [clears throat] US District judge dismissed his federal appeal. May 2016, a federal appeals court rejected another appeal.

 February 2017, the United States Supreme Court declined to hear the case for a final time. Every court that reviewed William Morva’s case upheld his death sentence. The legal system had made its decision. Even with the new diagnosis, even with evidence his brain couldn’t distinguish reality from delusion. William Morva would die for his crimes.

 The courts had spoken, but the case was far from over. As William’s execution date approached, something remarkable began happening outside the courtroom. A coalition of advocates, mental health professionals, lawmakers, and international observers began calling for clemency. The National Alliance on Mental Illness wrote to Governor Terry McAuliff, emphasizing that William had been diagnosed with a severe long-standing mental illness that was initially misdiagnosed and that the jury never heard how his delusions led directly to his crimes. Linda A. Klene,

president of the American Bar Association, wrote to the governor expressing concern over the scheduled execution and asking him to fully review the evidence of Williams delusional disorder. Advocacy groups launched petition campaigns. Over 31,000 people signed petitions begging Governor McAlliff to grant clemency.

 the ACLU, Amnesty International, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, Mental Health America in Virginia, the Virginia Council of Churches, and Virginiaians for alternatives to the death penalty all joined the effort. Representatives from Hungary met with Governor McAuliffe. Years earlier, Hungary had granted William citizenship through his grandfather’s ancestry, making him a Hungarian national.

 The Hungarian government formally requested that Virginia spare his life. The European Union, which opposes capital punishment categorically, sent formal letters urging clemency. Two United Nations human rights experts issued a public statement urging Governor McAuliffe to halt the execution of a man with what they termed a psychosocial disability.

The international pressure was enormous. But perhaps more significantly, domestic opposition was building as well. 28 Virginia state lawmakers called for clemency. 17 delegates and five state senators. These weren’t all death penalty opponents. Some had voted to uphold capital punishment in other cases.

 But they believed executing someone with Williams level of mental illness was fundamentally wrong. Three members of the US House of Representatives added their voices. Bobby Scott, Gerald Connelly, and Don Byer all represented Virginia districts. All asked the governor to show mercy. Legal scholars wrote opeds. Mental health professionals gave interviews.

The media coverage intensified as the execution date approached. And then something extraordinary happened that revealed just how complicated this case really was. Rachel Sutifan spoke publicly. She was the daughter of Deputy Sheriff Eric Sutfin, one of the two men William Morva had killed. By every conventional measure, she should have wanted William to die.

 Her father was murdered. Her family was devastated. The trial and appeals had dragged on for years, preventing any real closure. But Rachel Sutfin supported the clemency petition. [clears throat] She asked Governor McAuliffe to spare William Morva’s life. In a public statement, Rachel explained that she believed William was severely mentally ill when he killed her father, that executing him wouldn’t bring her father back, that it wouldn’t heal her family.

 That mercy was the right response, even in the face of terrible loss. The daughter of a murdered sheriff’s deputy was asking the state not to execute her father’s killer. It was an act of compassion that should have moved everyone who heard it. Rachel Sutfin had every reason to want William dead. She had every right to demand vengeance.

 Instead, she asked for mercy because she understood that executing a severely mentally ill man doesn’t serve justice. It just compounds tragedy. Governor McAuliff’s office reviewed all of this. the petitions, the letters from lawmakers, the international pressure, the medical evidence, Rachel Sutfin’s extraordinary plea for mercy.

[clears throat] And then they made their decision. July 6th, 2017, Greensville Correctional Center, Virginia. Despite everything, despite the 31,000 signatures, despite the lawmakers and mental health advocates, despite the international pressure, despite Rachel Sutfin’s heartbreaking plea for the life of her father’s killer, Governor Terry McAuliffe declined to grant clemency.

 In a brief statement, the governor acknowledged Williams mental illness, but noted that multiple courts had reviewed the case and found him competent and culpable. The execution would proceed as scheduled. William Morva’s attorneys released a statement expressing their disappointment, but also their hope that Williams case would lead to reforms.

 They hoped that by improving access to proper evaluation and treatment for people living with severe mental illness, future tragedies might be avoided. At 9:15 p.m., William Charles Morvine was strapped to a gurnie in the execution chamber. A prison official asked if he had any last words. William simply said no. No final statement.

 No apology to the families of the men he killed. No explanation of what had driven him. Just one word. No. The lethal chemicals flowed through the IV line into his veins. Sodium thopental to render him unconscious. Pancerium bromide to stop his breathing. Potassium chloride to stop his heart. At 9:15 p.m., William Charles Morva was pronounced dead, 35 years old, the last person Virginia would ever execute.

William Morva’s execution didn’t end the story. In some ways, it began a new chapter. On March 24th, 2021, less than 4 years after Williams death, Virginia abolished capital punishment entirely. The state legislature voted to end executions. Governor Ralph Northam signed the bill into law. Virginia became the first southern state to abolish the death penalty.

[clears throat] A state with a long history of capital punishment. One of the most active execution states in American history had decided it was wrong. William Morva became a symbol of why his case exemplified everything troubling about executing the mentally ill. A man who showed signs of severe psychosis for years before killing anyone.

 A man who received the wrong diagnosis at the critical moment when treatment could have made a difference. A man whose jury never heard the truth about his mental state. A man executed despite overwhelming evidence that his brain couldn’t distinguish reality from delusion. [clears throat] His case became a cautionary tale about the catastrophic consequences of misdiagnosis and untreated mental illness.

 William’s story didn’t just influence Virginia. His case was cited in death penalty debates across the country. Mental health advocates used his execution as evidence that the system cannot reliably distinguish between evil and illness. There’s a final piece to this story that makes the tragedy even more pointed. William’s younger brother, Michael Morvi, was also diagnosed with delusional disorder years later.

 The condition ran in the family, a genetic component that nobody had recognized when William was alive and deteriorating. Michael was incarcerated for different crimes. But unlike William, Michael received proper treatment. He was given antiscychotic medication. He received therapy. His delusions were managed. Michael Morva was eventually released from prison.

 He got the help William never received. He got the treatment that might have saved three lives if it had been provided years earlier. William lived and died with an untreated brain disorder that made him literally unable to distinguish reality from delusion. His brother received treatment for the same disorder and survived. The difference between them wasn’t character or choice. It was luck. It was timing.

It was whether the system caught them before or after they hurt someone. Two men died because William Morva’s mental illness went untreated for years. Derek McFarland, 32 years old, a hospital security guard who ran toward danger to help a colleague. A man doing his job when he encountered someone who saw him as an enemy instead of a helper.

 Eric Sutin, 40 years old, a sheriff’s deputy who survived one shooting, quit and then chose to return to service because he believed in protecting his community. A husband, a father to twin 9-year-old daughters who grew up without him. Their deaths were tragedies, preventable tragedies that happened because every system designed to catch people like William failed.

 William’s family saw he was deteriorating but couldn’t force treatment. The mental health evaluation after his 2005 arrest was superficial and reached the wrong conclusion. The [clears throat] jail, where he spent a year awaiting trial, provided no treatment for his delusions. The jury that sentenced him never heard the truth about his mental state.

 failure after failure after failure. But executing William Morva didn’t bring Derek McFarland back. It didn’t bring Eric Sutfin home to his daughters. It didn’t fix the broken mental health system that created this nightmare. It didn’t prevent the next tragedy. All it did was add one more death to a catastrophe that never should have happened. Rachel Sutfin understood this.

She lost her father to William’s untreated illness. She grew up without her dad because a sick man’s brain betrayed him and she still found it in her heart to ask for mercy. Her compassion in the face of devastating loss showed a depth of humanity that should have moved everyone who heard