Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) mistakenly restored the right to vote to several violent felons currently in prison or on supervised probation, as part of his sweeping clemency order, records show.
Among the 206,000 felons who were awarded voting rights are some high-profile killers whose crimes shocked their small communities.
Ronald R. Cloud, 68, was in prison in West Virginia for sexual assaults involving a child when he pleaded guilty in 2014 to the murder of a Fauquier County man in a three-decade-old cold case.
Daniel Harmon-Wright, 36, was a Culpeper police officer when he shot a Sunday school teacher in her Jeep as the vehicle drove away.
When McAuliffe restored their rights and the rights of others amid great fanfare on April 22, he presented it as a way for Virginia to move past the Jim Crow era, because African Americans have been disproportionately affected by felon disenfranchisement. One in 4 African Americans in Virginia had been banned from voting because of laws restricting the rights of those with convictions.
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