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TechnoratiNew Jersey lawmakers approved legislation this week to abolish the death penalty, poising the state to become the first in the nation since 1965 to repeal capital punishment.
(Photo: AP Images / David Gard)New Jersey Assemblyman Christopher Bateman, R, 16th Legislative District, speaks at the state house in Trenton, N.J., Thursday, Dec. 13, 2007. He co-sponsored a measure to abolish the state's death penalty. The New Jersey Assembly approved legislation Thursday to abolish the state's death penalty, making Gov. Jon S. Corzine's signature the only step left before the state becomes the first in four decades to ban executions.
The state General Assembly, which is controlled by Democrats, voted 44 to 36 on Thursday to repeal the death penalty and replace it with life in prison without parole. The decision comes just days after the state Senate approved the abolition bill, 21 to 16, on Monday.
Gov. Jon S. Corzine has pledged to sign the bill, which would grant reprieve for the state’s eight inmates on death row, within a week.
"We would be better served as a society by having a clear and certain outcome for individuals who carry out heinous crimes. And that's what I think we are doing — making certain that individuals will be in prison without any possibility of parole,” said Corzine at a news conference in Trenton, N.J.
The abolition bill was introduced in November after a special state commission concluded earlier this year that the death penalty was more costly to the state than life in prison, did not effectively prevent violent crime, and could lead to innocent people being executed.
In its report, the commission wrote that the death penalty “is inconsistent with evolving standards of decency.”
Some Republicans had opposed the ban, arguing that capital punishment should still be enforced for those who murder law-enforcement officials, rape and murder children, and for terrorists. Democrats, who control both houses, rejected the idea.
"It's time New Jersey got out of the execution business," said Assemblyman Wilfredo Caraballo, a Democrat who approved the legislation. "Capital punishment is costly, discriminatory, immoral and barbaric. We're a better state than one that puts people to death."
Opponents of the death penalty hailed the Garden State’s move as a small step toward a nationwide ban on capital punishment and hope that the thirty-seven states with death penalty laws will follow suit.
The head of Amnesty International for the United States, Larry Cox, referred to the decision as "a harbinger of things to come."
"New Jersey stands to embolden lawmakers who were as fearful of eliminating capital punishment as they were of keeping it,” Cox said in a statement Thursday.
"Lawmakers across the country are realizing that capital punishment is permanently flawed, and the public is increasingly wary of a system that holds the very real possibility of executing the innocent.”
Many law experts, however, say a nationwide abolition of capital punishment is a long way in coming. They say they don’t expect a death penalty ban among states with active death penalty laws such as Texas or Virginia, or those states with large death row populations, such as California or Florida.
"I don't think this is the beginning of legislative abolition. It may be the beginning of the beginning of legislative reconsideration,” David Dow, a professor at the University of Houston Law Center who also represents Death Row inmates, told the Chicago Tribune.
Bills to abolish the death penalty in three states were recently approved but none have advanced further than the Colorado House committee, the Montana Senate and the New Mexico House.
Currently, there is a moratorium on executions while the U.S. Supreme Court considers the question of whether lethal injection constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. A decision is expected next year. Continue »
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