James Abbott, Chief of Police of West Orange, New Jersey, recent­ly spoke at an inter­na­tion­al forum regard­ing his expe­ri­ence as a mem­ber of the New Jersey Death Penalty Study Commission. Chief Abbott, who was Governor Codey’s Republican appointee to the Commission, said he did not antic­i­pate chang­ing his mind regard­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, but was great­ly influ­enced by the sto­ries of mur­der vic­tims’ fam­lies who tes­ti­fied dur­ing the com­mis­sion’s hear­ings. ​“I had no idea how much fam­i­lies suf­fer fac­ing years of death penal­ty appeals and reversals.…For every per­son that had been sen­tenced to death, there was a fam­i­ly wait­ing for the promised pun­ish­ment to be deliv­ered.… The real­i­ty is that there is no clo­sure in cap­i­tal cas­es, just more atten­tion to the mur­der­er and less to the vic­tim. Unfortunately, it’s eas­i­er for most of U.S. cit­i­zens to name noto­ri­ous killers than it is their vic­tims.” Abbott lament­ed the lack of sup­port for mur­der vic­tims’ fam­i­lies: ​“I would want to know that the per­son who did it was behind bars for life, so they could nev­er kill again, and that my fam­i­ly had the ser­vices they need­ed to heal and the finan­cial sup­port they need­ed to live with­out fur­ther sac­ri­fice. Our Commission learned that those kinds of ser­vices were sore­ly lack­ing – and that they could be improved with the finan­cial sav­ings from end­ing the death penal­ty.” Read Chief Abbott’s full pre­sen­ta­tion here.

(J. Abbott, tes­ti­mo­ny at the 4th World Congres Against the Death Penalty, Geneva, Switzerland, February 2010) (post­ed April 7, 2010). See also Victims and New Voices.

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