In a recent op-ed in the New Jersey Daily Record, Jim O’Brien detailed his expe­ri­ences with the legal sys­tem as the father of a mur­der vic­tim. His daugh­ter Deidre was mur­dered in 1982, and the cap­i­tal tri­als and appeals for the man con­vict­ed of the crime last­ed anoth­er 8 years. O’Brien stat­ed, ​“I’ve lived through the state’s process of try­ing to kill [a mur­der­er], and I can say with­out hes­i­ta­tion that it is not worth the anguish that it puts sur­vivors through….” Because of the ​“hor­ren­dous toll” the process took on his fam­i­ly and the lit­tle clo­sure it gave them, O’Brien asked the New Jersey leg­is­la­ture to abol­ish the death penalty. 

Over the past year, a bipar­ti­san com­mis­sion has con­duct­ed a study of New Jersey’s death penal­ty. The com­mis­sion inves­ti­gat­ed many aspects of the death penal­ty includ­ing its impact on the fam­i­lies and friends of mur­der vic­tims. O’Brien and his family’s painful expe­ri­ence was not unique, accord­ing to a Department of Justice study. About 70% of hus­bands and wives in the same sit­u­a­tion divorce, sep­a­rate, or devel­op a sub­stance abuse prob­lem. O’Brien said that many death penal­ty pro­po­nents believe that the pun­ish­ment is nec­es­sary to bring clo­sure to the vic­tims’ fam­i­lies, but he dis­agrees. Some clo­sure does come with time; how­ev­er, ​“the death penal­ty forces that clo­sure fur­ther away than any oth­er pun­ish­ment on the books.”

Based upon infor­ma­tion such as this and tes­ti­mo­ny from vic­tims’ fam­i­ly mem­bers, the New Jersey com­mis­sion rec­om­mend­ed that the death penal­ty be replaced with a sen­tence of life with­out parole. The leg­is­la­ture is like­ly to vote on this issue next month.
(“Death Penalty Punishes Victims’ Families, Too” by Jim O’Brien, The Daily Record, Nov. 25, 2007). See Victims and New Voices.

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