NEWS RELEASE
Governor Jon S. Corzine
December 17, 2007

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Governor Jon S. Corzine
Remarks as Delivered
December 17, 2007

Good morn­ing everyone.

Thank you all for being here. Today, December 17th 2007, is a momen­tous day — a day of progress — for the State of New Jersey and for the mil­lions of peo­ple across our nation and around the globe who reject the death penal­ty as a moral or prac­ti­cal response to the griev­ous, even heinous, crime of murder.

Today, through my sig­na­ture on this bill, New Jersey abol­ish­es the death penal­ty as a pol­i­cy of our state.

For the peo­ple of New Jersey, I sign this leg­is­la­tion with pride.

I want to thank so many of those who join us today for their thought­ful­ness and courage in mak­ing today a reality.

First let me cite the Death Penalty Study Commission, chaired by Reverend Bill Howard, pas­tor of Bethany Baptist Church in Newark, a group that was made up of a diverse set of indi­vid­u­als rep­re­sen­ta­tive of pros­e­cu­tors, law-enforce­ment, vic­tims, reli­gious groups and others.

Let me just note, five of the Commissioners were direct­ly impact­ed by the vio­lence of mur­der in their fam­i­lies, directly.

The state leg­is­la­ture showed coura­geous lead­er­ship. I must say, incred­i­ble lead­er­ship not just by Senator Lesniak and Senator Martin, the spon­sors or Assemblyman Caraballo, or Assemblyman Bateman, the lead­ers Roberts & Codey – but for all those that voted yes.

This is one of those con­science votes that indi­vid­u­als must actu­al­ly weigh and bal­ance their own sense of moral­i­ty and I am very, very grate­ful to all of you. A num­ber of you are here today who vot­ed yes, Senator Gil, Senator Turner. I look for­ward to join­ing with all of you as I sign this bill.

It should be not­ed that because of the action of the leg­is­la­ture, this is the first state to leg­isla­tive­ly end the death penal­ty since the U.S. Supreme Court reau­tho­rized cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in 1976.

I also want to thank advo­ca­cy groups, par­tic­u­lar­ly New Jerseyans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, which have cre­at­ed a fun­da­men­tal grass roots groundswell that put pres­sure on those of us in pub­lic ser­vice to stand up and do the right thing. The New Jersey Catholic Conference, the ACLU and there are many oth­er groups that joined in this process and I am eternally grateful.

I also want to rec­og­nize that oth­er good peo­ple will describe today’s actions in quite dif­fer­ent terms — in terms of injus­tice – par­tic­u­lar­ly for those who car­ry heavy hearts, bro­ken hearts from their tragic losses.

While no one can imag­ine their pain, I will sign this law abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty because I and a bipar­ti­san major­i­ty of our leg­is­la­ture — and I con­grat­u­late Senator Bateman and Senator Martin in par­tic­u­lar for their lead­er­ship on this — believe a non­vi­o­lent sen­tence of life in prison with­out parole best cap­tures our State’s high­est val­ues and reflects our best efforts to search for true jus­tice, rather than state-endorsed killing.

As Reverend King implored all mankind while accept­ing his Nobel Peace Prize — ​“Man must evolve, for all human con­flict, a method of res­o­lu­tion which rejects revenge, aggres­sion and retaliation.”

Today, New Jersey is truly evolving.

We evolve, if you believe as I do, that gov­ern­ment can­not pro­vide a fool­proof death penal­ty that pre­cludes the pos­si­bil­i­ty of exe­cut­ing the innocent.

Society must ask — Is it not moral­ly supe­ri­or to imprison 100 peo­ple for life than it is to exe­cute all 100 when it is prob­a­ble we exe­cute an innocent?

We evolve, if you believe as I do, that because New Jersey has not exe­cut­ed any­one in 44 years, there is lit­tle col­lec­tive will or appetite for our com­mu­ni­ty to enforce this law and there­fore the law has lit­tle deterrence value.

That is, if you ever accept­ed there was a deterrent value.

We evolve, if you believe as I do, that the loved ones of vic­tims may be more deeply hurt by long delays and end­less appeals than they would be if there were cer­tain­ty of life in prison with no pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole.

Our debate has brought forth vic­tims’ voic­es on both sides of this perspective.

We evolve, if you believe as I do, it is eco­nom­ic fol­ly to expend more State resources on legal process­es in an attempt to exe­cute an inmate than keep­ing a crim­i­nal incar­cer­at­ed for life.

It is esti­mat­ed that it cost the State of New Jersey more than a quar­ter-bil­lion dol­lars, above and beyond incar­cer­a­tion, to pur­sue the death penal­ty since it was rein­stat­ed in 1982 – a sig­nif­i­cant sum that could have effec­tive­ly be used in sup­port­ing and com­pen­sat­ing vic­tims’ families.

Finally, we evolve, if you believe as I do, that it is dif­fi­cult, if not impos­si­ble, to devise a humane tech­nique of exe­cu­tion — one that is not cru­el and unusual.

These are all thought­ful and log­i­cal argu­ments, and there are oth­ers, to abol­ish the death penal­ty — the Commission and the leg­is­la­ture gave weight to these argu­ments — but for me, the ques­tion is more fundamental.

I believe soci­ety must first deter­mine if its endorse­ment of vio­lence begets vio­lence — and — if vio­lence under­mines our com­mit­ment to the sanc­ti­ty of life.

To these ques­tions, I answer ​“Yes,” and there­fore I believe we must evolve to end­ing that endorsement.

Now, make no mis­take: by this action, soci­ety is not for­giv­ing these heinous crimes or acts that have caused immea­sur­able pain to the fam­i­lies and brought fear to society.

The per­pe­tra­tors of these actions deserve absolute­ly no sym­pa­thy and the crim­i­nals deserve the strictest pun­ish­ment that can be imposed with­out imposing death.

That pun­ish­ment is life in prison without parole.

The only excep­tion, of course, is the deter­mi­na­tion that a con­vict­ed felon is in fact inno­cent beyond the shad­ow of a doubt.

Let me repeat: this bill does not for­give or in any way con­done the unfath­omable acts car­ried out by the eight men now on New Jersey’s death row.

They will spend the rest of their lives in jail.

And to that end, last night, I signed an order com­mut­ing to life with­out parole the death sen­tences of the eight per­sons cur­rent­ly on death row.

This com­mu­ta­tion action pro­vides legal cer­tain­ty that these indi­vid­u­als will nev­er again walk free in our society.

These com­mu­ta­tions, along with today’s bill sign­ing, brings to a close in New Jersey the pro­tract­ed moral and prac­ti­cal debate on the death penalty.

Our col­lec­tive deci­sion is one for which we can be proud.

Thank you.