New Jersey Moves Closer to Abolishing the Death Penalty

By an 8 – 4 vote on Dec. 3, the New Jersey Senate Budget Committee vot­ed to advance a bill to replace the death penal­ty with a sen­tence of life in prison with­out parole. The bill would make New Jersey the first state to leg­isla­tive­ly abol­ish the death penal­ty since the U.S. Supreme Court rein­stat­ed the death penal­ty in 1976. Senator Raymond Lesniak, the bil­l’s spon­sor, cit­ed a recent case of wrong­ful con­vic­tion in New Jersey when explain­ing his sup­port for abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty. He stat­ed, ​“There are hun­dreds of [peo­ple] through­out the United States who were wrong­ly con­vict­ed of mur­der…. You can’t say it can’t hap­pen in New Jersey. It can. It’s impos­si­ble for human beings to devise a sys­tem free of the risk of human error.”

In January of 2007, a New Jersey com­mis­sion began inves­ti­gat­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and its place in the state’s crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. Their report found that not only was their no clear evi­dence that the death penal­ty deterred mur­der, but also that it was more expen­sive than sen­tenc­ing a per­son to life in prison. Families of sev­er­al mur­der vic­tims like­wise urged the state to abol­ish the death penal­ty. Charles Bennett’s daugh­ter and two grand­chil­dren were killed by Bennett’s son-in-law Scott McCarter, who killed him­self after the mur­ders. Bennett told the com­mis­sion, ​“Had Scott lived I can­not imag­ine our fam­i­ly going through the agony of a death penal­ty process.” He also said that he and his fam­i­ly would have ​“fought fero­cious­ly” against a death sen­tence so they could get quick­er jus­tice for the loss of their loved ones.

The death penal­ty bill is expect­ed to be put to a full vote in the New Jersey Senate and Assembly before the leg­isla­tive ses­sion ends on Jan. 8, 2008. Governor Jon Corzine sup­ports the bill.

The last exe­cu­tion in New Jersey took place in 1963, and the state cur­rent­ly has 8 peo­ple on death row.
(“New Jersey Moves Toward Abolishing Death Penalty,” by Tom Hester, Jr., Associated Press. December 3, 2007). See also Recent Legislative Activity and Death Penalty in Flux.