"The House of Delegates voted Wednesday by a wide margin to keep cigarette smoking legal in Virginia restaurants and bars that allow lighting up.

The House voted 59-40 to reject Gov. Timothy M. Kaine’s proposed ban on restaurant smoking, which had been in the form of a wide-ranging amendment to a smaller smoking bill sponsored by House Majority Leader H. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem.

Griffith said the wording of Kaine’s amendment would have banned smoking at private country clubs, catered events and even the outdoor patios of restaurants.

Del. Rob Bell, R-Albemarle County, said the proposed ban went too far on the punishment end as well by carrying a jail term for a third offense by either a smoker or a restaurant owner who allowed smoking in an eatery.

“To have a jailable penalty for someone for smoking a cigarette, that seemed a bit much,” Bell said.

In separate actions, the General Assembly expanded the death penalty to apply to the killing of a judge or a witness by overriding a pair of the governor’s vetoes, but the Senate upheld the veto of an expansion to cover accomplices to murder.

Kaine is a Roman Catholic who personally opposes capital punishment. While not in favor of expanding the death penalty, he has allowed three executions to go forward.

After the legislature finished its one-day session to deal with his vetoes and amendments, Kaine told reporters, “Virginia has the second highest rate of executions in the United States and I just don’t believe expanding the death penalty any more is going to be the way to go to provide greater public safety.”

The House overrode two of Kaine’s vetoes by wide margins. The veto of the death penalty bill for murdering a judge to influence the outcome of a trial was overridden on a 82-18 vote, and the veto of the witness bill was rejected 83-16.

“You can tell it is an election year,” Del. R. Steven Landes, R-Weyers Cave, said right after the House cast only 16 votes to uphold Kaine’s veto of the witness bill, far fewer than the 34 needed to sustain it.

Del. C. Todd Gilbert, R-Woodstock, sponsor of the House bills that extend the death penalty to witness killings and would have eliminated the triggerman rule, said he welcomed the approved expansion.

“Obviously, I’m pleased that we got something accomplished, but I am obviously disappointed along with most prosecutors in Virginia that we couldn’t fix the triggerman business,” said Gilbert, a former Shenandoah prosecutor. “That’s been a source of frustration for commonwealth’s attorneys across the state for a long time.”

Bell, a former prosecutor in Orange, agreed. He and Gilbert said Virginia is among a small minority of the 37 death penalty states that do not allow execution of accomplices to murder.

Bell said the triggerman rule “requires us to actually prove who pulls the trigger, which can be very difficult in cases in which there is more than one person acting together.”

Legislators said the vote to defeat Kaine’s proposed restaurant smoking ban was not as close as expected.

“With the smoking bill, it was absolutely predictable,” said Sen. R. Creigh Deeds, D-Bath County. He said the ban would have passed in the Senate but was always in serious trouble in the House.

Griffith’s bill without the governor’s amendment now goes back to Kaine, who promised to veto it. That will leave the state’s smoking laws the same as they are today, which means non-smoking sections will remain in large restaurants.

Kaine said he had acted to protect restaurant employees and customers from the health risks associated with secondhand smoke.

“Momentum is strongly in favor of these kinds of protections for workers and consumers,” he told reporters after the House rejected the smoking ban. He said the issue would return next year." (Bob Gibson, The Daily Progress, April 5, 2007)