New Jersey might be next!

[pumpkinpie]

New Jersey Lawmakers to Vote on Abolishing Death Penalty

New Jersey Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts, Jr. (pictured) has announced that on December 13 members of the Assembly will vote on whether to reduce the state's most severe punishment to life in prison without parole. A spokeswoman for Senate President Richard J. Codey said the Senate is likely to take similar action before the legislative session ends on January 8, though a date has not been set for the vote. If approved by the Legislature and signed by Gov. Jon Corzine, who opposes the death penalty, the move would make New Jersey the first state to vote to abolish capital punishment since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated it in 1976.

Roberts made the announcement in Trenton after meeting with Sister Helen Prejean, author of "Dead Man Walking." He called New Jersey's death penalty a "flawed public policy" that is costly, discriminatory, immoral and cruel. He added that "the consequences are irreparable if mistakes are made" and said that "the time has come" to consider the abolition measure. Prejean praised the decision and said that New Jersey is "going to be a beacon on the hill."

New Jersey reinstated the death penalty in 1982, but has not executed anyone since 1963. The Legislature imposed a moratorium on executions in December 2005 when it formed a commission that studied the death penalty. The state has eight men on death row.

(Associated Press, November 9, 2007). See Recent Legislative Activities and Innocence.

www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?did=2507&scid=64

[pumpkinpie]

NEW VOICES: Father of Murder Victim Urges New Jersey Legislature to Abandon the Death Penalty
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 , 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.

www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?did=2525&scid=64

[pumpkinpie]

New Jersey Nears Repeal of Death Penalty
By JEREMY W. PETERS
Published: December 11, 2007

TRENTON, Dec. 10 — The New Jersey Senate voted Monday to make the state the first in the country to repeal the death penalty since 1976, when the United States Supreme Court set guidelines for the nation’s current system of capital punishment.

Approval in the Senate was seen as the biggest obstacle to the repeal, and in the end, it passed 21 to 16, receiving the bare minimum number of votes required in the 40-seat chamber. Three senators did not vote.

Legislators on both sides of the debate said they expected the measure to pass easily on Thursday in the General Assembly, where Democrats hold 50 of the 80 seats.

Gov. Jon S. Corzine, a Democrat and a staunch opponent of the death penalty, has said he would sign a measure ending executions.

“Today New Jersey can become a leader, an inspiration to other states,” Senator Robert Martin, a Republican from Morris Plains who voted for the bill, said during Monday’s debate.

For those opposed to capital punishment, New Jersey’s repeal would represent a victory that has eluded them in the modern history of the death penalty. Though legislatures across the country have tried to abolish capital punishment since 1976, none have succeeded. This year alone, the legislatures in Nebraska, Montana, Maryland and New Mexico have debated bills to repeal those states’ death penalties, but each measure failed, often by a slim margin.

So far, opponents of the death penalty have succeeded only through court rulings, including the decision in 2004 declaring New York’s capital punishment statute unconstitutional, or through moratoriums imposed by a governor, as in Illinois and Maryland.

“What New Jersey is going to do is have a legislature-initiated repeal, and that’s different,” said Frankin E. Zimring, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

Opponents of the death penalty said Monday that they hoped New Jersey’s action would give new energy to movements in states that have recently voted down repeal bills, and would serve as a catalyst for other states to revisit their laws on capital punishment.

Diann Rust-Tierney, executive director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, said: “The New Jersey Legislature did the right thing. And we think we’ll be seeing more state legislatures saying, ‘We don’t want the death penalty.’”

While the Senate vote mainly broke down along party lines, four Republicans did break from the party leadership and vote for the bill. Three of them — Mr. Martin, James J. McCullough of Atlantic County and Joseph A. Palaia of Deal — will not be returning to the Senate when the new Legislature is seated next month. Three Democrats voted against the bill.

Earlier Monday, a bill to replace the death penalty with a sentence of life in prison with no parole was approved on a 5-1 vote by the Assembly’s Law and Public Safety Committee.

Because the Senate voted during a lame-duck legislative session, legislators who might otherwise have voted against the bill were afforded some political cover — a factor that may have tipped the balance.

Mr. McCullough said Monday that he arrived at his decision over the summer after meeting with law enforcement officials and the family of a murder victim. “That’s the right thing to do,” he said. “I’m an outgoing senator.”

But opponents of the bill were sharply critical of Senate Democratic leaders for scheduling a vote during a lame-duck session, when issues of such import are seldom taken up.

“Why not let this go to the new session?” asked Senator Robert W. Singer, a Republican.

Robert Blecker, a professor at New York Law School who testified on Monday before the Assembly committee, called the process a “charade” and criticized lawmakers for not allowing for more time to debate the bill. “You’ll go where you want to go,” he said. “You’ll abolish the death penalty in New Jersey, and the world will watch.”

Since the legislative elections on Nov. 6, the process to repeal New Jersey’s death penalty has unfolded swiftly. The Senate president, Richard J. Codey, and the Assembly speaker, Joseph J. Roberts, both Democrats, placed bills abolishing capital punishment at the top of their agendas for the lame-duck session, and called for votes to be taken by the end of the year.

Supporters of the bill said the process was not rushed and pointed to a six-month-long review of the state’s capital sentence system by the New Jersey Death Penalty Study Commission, which found that the system was ineffective and recommended that it be replaced with life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The state has not executed anyone since 1963. In addition, its procedures for carrying out an execution were declared unconstitutional in 2004 by a state appeals court, and the Department of Corrections has said it has no intention of rewriting them.

Yet prosecutors still seek the death penalty in some cases, and eight men are currently on death row at the New Jersey State Prison here.

The measure approved by the Senate gives the eight men 60 days to file motions to be resentenced to life in prison.

Mr. Codey, who sponsored legislation in the early 1980s that reinstated New Jersey’s death penalty, said the system plays a cruel hoax on murder victims’ families by giving them the false hope of an execution.

“The best thing to do for us as a society to do is to be honest with them,” said Mr. Codey, who more recently served as governor. “Don’t tell someone that we’re going to execute somebody when the reality is it’s not going to happen — at least here in the state of New Jersey. Maybe in Texas. Maybe in other states. But it’s not going to happen here in New Jersey, and we’ve got to accept that.”

www.nytimes.com/2007/12/11/nyregion/11death.html?_r=1&ref=us&oref=slogin

[pumpkinpie]

New Jersey Assembly Votes to End Death Penalty

By JEREMY W. PETERS
Published: December 14, 2007
TRENTON — The death knell for New Jersey’s death penalty was sounded on Thursday as the General Assembly approved a bill eliminating capital punishment, a move that clears the way for Gov. Jon S. Corzine to sign the measure as early as Monday.

Mr. Corzine said he would act quickly. “It will be very, very prompt,” he said at news conference on Thursday. “I’m sure it will be within the next week.”

Once he signs the bill, New Jersey will become the first state in the modern era of capital punishment to repeal the death penalty.

The measure has moved at an unusually fast pace through the Legislature. In the last week , it has passed a Senate committee, an Assembly committee and both houses, leading many Republicans to accuse the Democratic leadership of trying to rush the bill through a lame-duck session.

“I am ashamed the Assembly would consider this bill today,” said Assemblyman Richard A. Merkt, a conservative Republican from Randolph.

The voting did not break down completely along party lines, however. Three Republicans joined 41 Democrats in the Assembly to pass the bill by a 44-36 margin. Surprisingly, nine Democrats voted against the measure. On Monday in the Senate, 4 Republicans joined 17 Democrats to muster just enough support to get the 21 votes needed to pass a bill.

“We need to put politics aside,” said Christopher Bateman, a Republican from Somerville. “I think we have an opportunity today to change the course on this very important issue.”

Several state legislatures have tried to overturn their death penalties since 1976, when the Supreme Court set the framework for the current system of capital punishment in the United States. And while executions have come to a halt by other means — a moratorium, for example, issued by the governor of Illinois, and a court ruling declaring New York’s capital punishment law unconstitutional — no state Legislature had ever flatly outlawed the death penalty.

Once the governor signs the bill, the New Jersey Department of Corrections will begin deciding what to do with the eight men on death row in the New Jersey State Prison. Under the bill, inmates sentenced to death have 60 days to petition the sentencing court to commute their sentences to life in prison with no possibility of parole. They also must agree to forego their right to any further appeals.

If they do not petition the court, their death sentences remain in place. But since the state’s capital punishment statute will be repealed, their sentences will be effectively equivalent to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Some of the most violent death row inmates — those who are allowed no contact with other inmates — would probably be placed in a unit of the prison nearly identical to death row, where they spend almost the entire day confined to a seven-foot-by-eleven-foot cell. The less violent death row inmates could be moved to the prison’s general population.

The Department of Corrections has said it will take up the matter once Mr. Corzine signs the bill.

www.nytimes.com/2007/12/14/nyregion/13cnd-death.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

[pumpkinpie]

TRENTON, New Jersey (CNN) -- New Jersey on Monday became the first state in more than three decades to abolish the death penalty after a state commission ruled the punishment is "inconsistent with evolving standards of decency."

New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine on Monday signs the legislation abolishing the death penalty in his state.

In signing the bill, Gov. Jon Corzine called it a "momentous day" and made the Garden State the first state to ban capital punishment since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated it in 1976.

Corzine on Sunday commuted the sentences of eight men sitting on the state's death row. They will now serve life in prison without parole, according to the governor's office.

"It's 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," Corzine said.

Society is not forgiving criminals, the Democratic governor insisted, but the law is necessary because "government cannot provide a fool-proof death penalty that precludes the possibility of executing the innocent."

"Society must ask," he continued, "is it not morally superior to imprison 100 people for life than it is to execute all 100 when it's probable we execute an innocent?"

The state Assembly approved the measure Thursday by a 44-36 vote after the Senate OK'd it 21-16.

New Jersey has not executed a prisoner since 1963.

The new legislation replaces the death penalty with life in prison without parole. The bill was introduced in November after a state commission concluded capital punishment was an ineffective deterrent to crime.


Since the Supreme Court's reinstatement of the death penalty, almost 1,100 people have been executed in 37 states. See the death penalty by state »

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, which opposes capital punishment, New Jersey joins 13 states and the District of Columbia that do not use execution as a means of punishment.
www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/12/17/death.penalty/?iref=hpmostpop

[michaelstoker78]

That´s very good news! I hope it will make a trend in the USA to stop this shameful practice of killing people.

When so many countries abolish the dp over the years, why should the US continue to side with the tyrannies?

[pumpkinpie]

michaelstoker78 said:

That´s very good news! I hope it will make a trend in the USA to stop this shameful practice of killing people.

When so many countries abolish the dp over the years, why should the US continue to side with the tyrannies?

Hi Michael, welcome!
It is good news that since the recent halt on all executions, three states have abolished the death penalty, New York, Massachusets, and now New Jersey.

[fallonnev]

michaelstoker78 said:

That´s very good news! I hope it will make a trend in the USA to stop this shameful practice of killing people.

When so many countries abolish the dp over the years, why should the US continue to side with the tyrannies?

Hi, Micha. Find a new home? ;D

[pumpkinpie]

fallonnev said:

michaelstoker78 said:

That´s very good news! I hope it will make a trend in the USA to stop this shameful practice of killing people.

When so many countries abolish the dp over the years, why should the US continue to side with the tyrannies?

Hi, Micha. Find a new home? ;D

I don't know, but it looks like you did! ;D

[sdl]

pumpkinpie said:

michaelstoker78 said:

That´s very good news! I hope it will make a trend in the USA to stop this shameful practice of killing people.

When so many countries abolish the dp over the years, why should the US continue to side with the tyrannies?

Hi Michael, welcome!
It is good news that since the recent halt on all executions, three states have abolished the death penalty, New York, Massachusets, and now New Jersey.

Always knew my hime state of MA had good common sense

[happyhaddock]

sdl said:

Always knew my hime state of MA had good common sense

Or sad experience:-

From the excellent CLEWS The Historic True Crime Blog

Women and the Death Penalty in Massachusetts, An Historical Review: Or Why Lizzie Borden Wasn’t Hanged, Nor Anyone Else There of Late

At the time Lizzie Borden faced the death penalty for the murder of her folks in August, 1892—for hanging was the mandatory penalty for murder in Massachusetts--the conviction of a woman for murder was an idea so thoroughly foreign to Massachusetts jurisprudence that it is hard to find a prior example. To determine whether that state’s government executed any women since the debacle of the witchcraft trials exactly 200 years before Lizzie’s trial, one has to consult history books so old that the edges of the pages dissolve under the fingertips into a velvety dust.

As of 1893, the year of Miss Borden’s trial, Massachusetts had hanged only two women in the past 114 years. (Actually, they might have hanged Rachel Wall there in 1789, as some accounts give the location of Wall’s execution as Massachusetts, but she was a murderous pirate, a category of its own.)

In both of these old cases, things went quite badly. The first botched execution was in 1778 when Bathsheba Spooner, the daughter of a prominent but unpopular judge, was put to death for murder. Bathsheba and her lover desired the death of her repulsive husband. Two British soldiers happened by with such services to offer.

Unluckily for Bathsheba, the Brits later bragged about their exploits. The trial lasted one day. Given her unfortunate name, Biblical parallels were easily drawn, and they set a quick date on which she’d be publicly hanged in Worcester for her part in the affair.

Bathsheba Spooner pleaded her belly. There was considerable debate about, and examination of, same.

On one hand, her pregnancy, if true, explained her sudden need to kill old Joshua Spooner. On the other, the physical signs were apparently lacking. They decided she was lying. Bathseba immediately filed a petition to reverse the decision, stating that "I am absolutely certain of being in a pregnant state.... What I bear, and clearly perceive to be animated, is innocent of the faults of her who bears it, and has, I beg leave to say, a right to the existence which God hath begun to give it."

Her plea was denied, and they hanged Bathsheba with her co-conspirators.

Only then did they learn the devastating news that Bathsheba was, in fact, five months pregnant when the murderess and the innocent son she carried were executed. The authorities had violated one of the most ancient maxims of English and Roman law: quot praegnantis mulieris damnatae paena differatur, quoad pariat; or, if a capitally condemned woman is barely with child, she shall be executed, but if she is quick with child, execution shall be staid until she is delivered.

More than four decades passed before the state again decided to hang a woman--with even more disastrous results, as difficult as that is to imagine. In 1831, Mary Johnson, a 22-year-old servant girl, was convicted of slitting the throats of her elderly master and mistress while they lay in bed.

As they hanged her--yes, dear readers, this is the account: as she was being dropped, the actual murderer confessed to killing the old couple. So convincing was he that Mary was cut down. They set about reviving her, perhaps mindful of the tradition that says anyone who survives a hanging must be pardoned, guilty or not, but to the lasting horror of all, she was irretrievably dead.

Thus the Commonwealth had a shameful record of executing the innocent. Massachusetts’ long struggle with the death penalty had left a strong taint on capital punishment, which became not a deterrent to murder, but a deterrent to convicting a woman of murder, as some nineteenth-century acquittals showed.

So the officials overseeing justice in the Borden matter faced devilish questions. Did such deplorable precedents give women license to kill? Could the state ignore its past and convict the guilty?

Well, you know the answers.

[michaelstoker78]

pumpkinpie said:

michaelstoker78 said:

That´s very good news! I hope it will make a trend in the USA to stop this shameful practice of killing people.

When so many countries abolish the dp over the years, why should the US continue to side with the tyrannies?

Hi Michael, welcome!
It is good news that since the recent halt on all executions, three states have abolished the death penalty, New York, Massachusets, and now New Jersey.

Hi Pumpkin, thanks. I didn´t know that the other states did actually abolish it. Now that´s really good news.
I´m quite sure that at least in my lifetime the US will be free of the dp, when younger people become lawmakers for instance.

[michaelstoker78]

fallonnev said:

michaelstoker78 said:

That´s very good news! I hope it will make a trend in the USA to stop this shameful practice of killing people.

When so many countries abolish the dp over the years, why should the US continue to side with the tyrannies?

Hi, Micha. Find a new home? ;D

Err, do I know you by any chance?
And re home - no, I already have a home and I´m happy that the death penalty has been abolished there for decades.

[pumpkinpie]

michaelstoker78 said:

pumpkinpie said:

Hi Michael, welcome!
It is good news that since the recent halt on all executions, three states have abolished the death penalty, New York, Massachusets, and now New Jersey.

Hi Pumpkin, thanks. I didn´t know that the other states did actually abolish it. Now that´s really good news.
I´m quite sure that at least in my lifetime the US will be free of the dp, when younger people become lawmakers for instance.

That's a good, hopeful attitude in regards to the death penalty. I hope your right!
By the way, you are "completely welcome" and it's nice to have you here... The guy who was only here for the "cracks" isn't welcome any longer.