In a recent edi­to­r­i­al, The New York Times praised New Jersey’s replace­ment of the death penal­ty with a sen­tence of life with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole. The Times wrote, ​“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.”

The Times not­ed the impor­tance of the inno­cence issue in the New Jersey vote: ​“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.”

Also not­ed was the par­tic­i­pa­tion by law enforce­ment and vic­tims’ rep­re­sen­ta­tives in the effort to end cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the state:

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.”

The Times called for a wider recon­sid­er­a­tion of the death penal­ty: ​“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.”
(“A Long Time Coming,” The New York Times, December 15, 2007). See also Editorials and Recent Legislation.

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