NEW JERSEY BANS DEATH PENALTY!!!!

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New Jersey Bans Death Penalty

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: December 17, 2007



TRENTON, N.J. (AP) -- Gov. Jon S. Corzine signed a law on Monday making New Jersey the first state in four decades to abolish the death penalty.

The bill, approved last week by the state's Assembly and Senate, replaces the death sentence with life in prison without parole.

The measure spares eight men on the state's death row. On Sunday, Corzine signed orders commuting the sentences of those eight to life in prison without parole.

Among the eight spared is Jesse Timmendequas, a sex offender who murdered 7-year-old Megan Kanka in 1994. The case inspired Megan's Law, which requires law enforcement agencies to notify the public about convicted sex offenders living in their communities.

Although New Jersey reinstated the death penalty in 1982 -- six years after the U.S. Supreme Court allowed states to resume executions -- it hasn't executed anyone since 1963.

A special state commission found in January that the death penalty was a more expensive sentence than life in prison, hasn't deterred murder, and risks killing an innocent person.

www.nytimes. com/2007/ 12/15/opinion/ 15sat1.html

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CEDP Editorial

December 15, 2007

A Long Time Coming

It took 31 years, but the moral bankruptcy, social imbalance, legal
impracticality and ultimate futility of the death penalty has finally
penetrated the consciences of lawmakers in one of the 37 states that arrogates to itself the right to execute human beings.

This week, the New Jersey Assembly and Senate passed a law abolishing the
death penalty, and Gov. Jon Corzine, a staunch opponent of execution,
promised to sign the measure very soon. That will make New Jersey the first
state to strike the death penalty from its books since the Supreme Court set
guidelines for the nation's system of capital punishment three decades ago.

Some lawmakers voted out of principled opposition to the death penalty.
Others felt that having the law on the books without enforcing it (New
Jersey has had a moratorium on executions since 2006) made a mockery of
their argument that it has deterrent value. Whatever the motivation of
individual legislators, by forsaking a barbaric practice that grievously
hurts the global reputation of the United States without advancing public
safety, New Jersey has set a worthy example for the federal government, and
for other states that have yet to abandon the creaky, error-prone machinery
of death.

New Jersey's decision to replace the death penalty with a sentence of life
without parole seems all the wiser coming in the middle of a month that has
already seen the convictions of two people formerly on death row in other
states repudiated. In one case, the defendant was found not guilty following
a new trial.

The momentum to repeal capital punishment has been building in New Jersey
since January, when a 13-member legislative commission recommended its
abolition. The panel, which included two prosecutors, a police chief,
members of the clergy and a man whose daughter was murdered in 2000, cited
serious concerns about the imperfect nature of the justice system and the
chance of making an irreversible mistake. The commission also concluded,
quite correctly, that capital punishment is both a poor deterrent and
"inconsistent with evolving standards of decency."

By clinging to the death penalty, states keep themselves in the company of
countries like Iran, North Korea and China - a disreputable pantheon of
human mistreatment. Small wonder the gyrations of New Jersey's Legislature
have been watched intently by human rights activists around the world.

Spurred in large part by the large and growing body of DNA-based exonerations, there is increasing national unease about the death penalty.

The Supreme Court is poised to consider whether lethal injections that torture prisoners in the process of killing them amount to unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment, an exercise bound to put fresh focus on some of the ugly details of implementing capital punishment.

In a sense, the practical impact of New Jersey's action may be largely symbolic.

Although there are eight people on New Jersey's death row, the moratorium was in place, and the state has not put anyone to death since 1963. Nevertheless, it took political courage for lawmakers to join with Governor Corzine.

Their renunciation of the death penalty could prick the conscience of elected officials in other states and inspire them to muster the courage to revisit their own laws on capital punishment.

At least that is our fervent hope.