New Jersey Marks Tenth Anniversary of Abolition of Capital Punishment

On December 17, 2007, New Jersey abolished the death penalty. On the tenth anniversary of abolition, the editorial board of the New Jersey Law Journal writes, “On the Death Penalty, New Jersey Got it Right.” The editorial board wrote, “Abolition has proven its worth, in that there has been no surge of murders, a significant decline of prosecution and appeal expenses, and the elimination of unremediable judicial mistakes. [Abolition] was and remains both the right thing and the sensible thing to have done.” In August 1982, New Jersey reenacted the death penalty, six years after the United State Supreme Court decision in Gregg v. Georgia upheld the constitutionality of state capital punishment laws. However, no defendant was ever executed in the state. In January 2006, the state legislature passed a bill creating the New Jersey Death Penalty Study Commission and imposing a moratorium on executions until the commission issued its report. The study commission’s report, released on January 2, 2007, recommended abolishing capital punishment. Among other findings, the commission determined that the costs of imposing the death penalty were “greater than the costs of life in prison without parole” and that there was “no compelling evidence that the New Jersey death penalty serves a legitimate penological intent.” Less than a year later, Governor Jon Corzine signed legislation abolishing the death penalty. Murders fell in New Jersey after the moratorium and repeal bills became law, marking the first time since 1999 that New Jersey experienced a drop in murders for two consecutive years. One year after repeal, New Jersey prosecutors reported that the abolition had not hindered prosecution of the state’s most violent offenders. The Law Journal editorial board said that, after a decade, the study commission’s assessment that the death penalty was not a deterrent to murder “has proven its worth.” The murder rate in New Jersey has been lower than it was in 2007 for eight of the past nine years and a 2017 DPIC study of murder rates over the last three decades found no difference in murder trends based upon whether a state had, or did not have, capital punishment. A December 15 statement released by the Catholic Bishops of New Jersey hailed the state’s abolition of the death penalty “as a victory for the dignity of life.” The Bishops wrote that while they “affirm the state’s duty to punish criminals, to prevent crime, and to assist victims,” they also “recognize the need to improve our criminal justice system and to forge a greater societal commitment to justice.” Society, they said, “has effective ways to protect itself and to redress injustice without resorting to the use of the death penalty.”