The short answers are that suspending the sentence for interracial marriage appears to have been a common practice in Virginia, suspending it in such a way that allowed the Lovings to live as a married couple outside Virginia probably seemed lenient, and it was the difficulty of resettling and not being able to visit family in Virginia that impelled the Lovings to challenge the penalty. But let's go into more depth.

Richard Loving and Mildred Loving (nee Jeter) were a couple from Central Point, Virginia. Central Point is a small unincorporated community in Caroline County, less than two hours' drive from Washington, D.C. Richard, a white man often described as a "redneck," had followed his father into the construction trade. He was friends with Mildred's older brothers through various connections including work, music, and the local drag-racing scene. Mildred and her family were part of Central Point's mixed-race community and identified most strongly with the Rappahannock, a local Native American nation that was at this point unrecognized. Although she is typically described nowadays as "black" and was generally treated as such in her litigation, in fact she herself did not accept this categorization and told one scholar in 2004 that she had "no black ancestry." Black or Native American, under Virginia law, she was considered "colored."

Richard began dating Mildred and with her family's blessing actually moved in with them. After Mildred became pregnant with their baby, the couple decided to marry and move into their own home, which Richard had built. Richard drove them to Washington, where they were married on June 2, 1958. Mildred's racial classification on the marriage license is "Indian" and Richard's is "white." They returned to Central Point and took up married life.

Possibly unknown to the Lovings (or at least to Mildred), their marriage and cohabitation were contrary to Virginia law. Virginia had forbidden interracial marriages since 1691. The laws in effect in 1958 were substantially those adopted in 1924. A marriage in which one party was "white" and the other was "negro" or "Indian" was forbidden. Under the law such a marriage was void no matter when contracted, and was a felony punishable by imprisonment in the state penitentiary for one to five years. (Originally the penalty was two to five years, but the minimum was decreased by a 1932 law.)

The Commonwealth's attorney (county-level prosecutor) obtained a warrant, and on the night of July 11/12, 1958 the police raided the Lovings' home and arrested them. At trial before Judge Leon M. Bazile on January 6, 1959, a deal was arranged. The Lovings entered a plea of guilty. They were convicted and sentenced to one year in jail, suspended for twenty-five years on the condition that "both accused leave Caroline County and the state of Virginia at once and do not return together or at the same time to said county and state for a period of twenty-five years."

This sentencing scheme had both ordinary and unusual aspects. Virginia courts dealing with interracial marriage criminal cases appear to have had a policy since the 1930s of imposing the minimum sentence and then suspending it on some kind of "don't do it again" condition. That condition might include one of the defendants leaving the state, which would inevitably break up the marriage--a marriage that Virginia law said did not exist. So imposing the minimum sentence but then not sending anyone to jail was pretty common. Granted, other cases involving these laws tended to concern alleged racial misclassification.

But Judge Bazile's condition allowed the Lovings to live outside Virginia in a community that allowed interracial marriage, such as the District of Columbia. Indeed, that seems to have been what everybody involved expected would happen: the Lovings would move to Washington and raise their family there. Leaving the marriage intact was exceptional. So in this respect, the sentence might be seen as somewhat lenient. It is possible Judge Bazile, while certainly opposed to interracial marriage and supportive of Virginia law (he had been a consultant to Virgina's efforts to avoid racial integration), saw this as the best solution, particularly since the Lovings were raising two children at the time of the trial.

The Lovings did move to Washington and moved in with Mildred's cousin and his wife, eventually having another child. Richard found work. The couple were initially under the incorrect impression that they were allowed to visit Virginia together as long as they did not stay overnight. The actual intent of the suspension was to allow them to visit separately only, not together. The Lovings came home to Central Point for Easter 1959, whereupon they were arrested and threatened with imposition of the sentence. Their lawyer told the court that he had incorrectly advised his clients, so they were let go with a warning.

The Lovings eventually found that they disliked city life, particularly after one child was injured by a car. They also found it impossible to resist the lure of simply driving home, which they continued to do from time to time.

In 1964, supposedly after being referred to the American Civil Liberties Union by U.S. Attorney General Bobby Kennedy, the Lovings initiated litigation to challenge their conviction (in state court) and Virginia's laws against interracial marriage (in federal court). The federal court proceedings were stayed while the state court proceedings went forward. Before the court, the ACLU lawyers always categorized the Lovings as black and white.

Back in state court, in 1965 Judge Bazile (about to retire) confirmed his previous decision and issued a notorious opinion stating that interracial marriage and any form of race-mixing was in defiance of divine law: "Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on different continents." In 1966, he Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals issued a unanimous opinion authored by Justice Harry Lee Carrico (who was on the bench till 2003) upholding the validity of the laws but finding fault with the precise sentencing. According to Justice Carrico, the suspension terms were not truly a banishment because either defendant could return to Virginia independently. But he thought the terms should be more directed toward cohabitation as a married couple rather than joint presence in Virginia, which perhaps suggested further moderation. On the other hand, Justice Carrico was apparently the first person to point out that the statute called for the penitentiary whereas Bazile had ordered jail. So the sentence was remanded for revision.

At this point, the Caroline County authorities might have attempted to offer the Lovings more lenient terms. In fact, by this time the Lovings had relocated to Central Point de facto if not de jure. In court, though, they pressed on by asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals' decision, and in 1967 got a unanimous decision striking down racial classifications in marriage laws: the famous Loving v. Virginia decision.

One other piece of context may be helpful: were interracial marriages actually investigated an prosecuted? For black-white marriages, the answer seems to be that they were, but others were not, which may be part of why Mildred's self-identification as "Indian" and belief the marriage was legal were so strong in her mind but never used by the lawyers. Although Virginia's laws against racial marriage by implication banned marriages between whites and Asians or Filipinos, and Judge Bazile's screed was hostile to such marriages, in fact such couples seem to have been tolerated by the authorities and did not lead to criminal prosecutions. There were many such couples in the Norfolk, Virginia area owing to the large military and mariner communities. But their marriages only came before the courts when one spouse or the other used it as a free path to annulment, which the Virginia courts allowed. Just after Loving was decided, a Norfolk newspaper's editorial noted that toleration of certain interracial marriages had long been the rule.

So in sum, it's possible that given Virginia's fundamentally flawed and unjust racial classification scheme, the Lovings were treated with relative leniency. But the Lovings wanted to live fully as a family without the restrictions imposed by these laws, so their only path was to challenge these laws and see them stricken.