N.J. leaders trying to end death penalty

Philadelphia Inquirer
November 25, 2007

With the backing of Gov. Corzine and its 2 top Democratic legislators, New
Jersey may soon become the first state to legislatively abolish the death
penalty since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the ultimate punishment 3
decades ago.

Legislative leaders have called for a vote before the current lame-duck
session ends in early January. The timing would allow almost a quarter of
the state lawmakers - 27 who are retiring or were defeated this fall - to
vote during their final weeks in office without fear of political
consequences.

The move to end capital punishment has been fueled by waning public
support for executions, doubt about its deterrence, and growing worries
about the fairness of a significant number of convictions, said Assembly
Speaker Joseph Roberts, the Camden County Democrat whose party controls
the lower chamber.

Corzine, Roberts, and Senate President Richard J. Codey (D., Essex) all
back changing the law to substitute life without parole for the death
penalty.

Corzine "is quite passionate about this," Lilo Stainton, his press
secretary, said last week. "He's always been staunchly opposed to the
death penalty. He just feels it's morally wrong."

The Assembly is scheduled to vote on the measure Dec. 13. The Senate
hasn't set a date, but Codey has pledged it will take the matter up before
the session ends Jan. 8.

The effort gained momentum early this year when a New Jersey study
commission voted, 12-1, to recommend that the state drop the penalty.

"There is increasing evidence that the death penalty is inconsistent with
evolving standards of decency," the panel wrote. Among other factors, the
commission cited polls indicating growing support among New Jerseyans for
sentences of life without parole, and the U.S. Supreme Court decisions
since 2002 banning execution of retarded or juvenile killers.

The commission added: "Executing a small number of persons guilty of
murder is not sufficiently compelling to justify the risk of making an
irreversible mistake."

The "machinery of death," as a U.S. Supreme Court justice once called it,
has been still in New Jersey for more than 40 years.

New Jersey's last execution was in 1963, and its death-row population of
eight is down from a high of 17 in 2001. In recent years, the state's
liberal Supreme Court has set aside numerous verdicts and systemically
narrowed the grounds on which people could be put to death.

Nationally, the death penalty is effectively on hold as the U.S. Supreme
Court considers appeals that question the constitutionality of lethal
injections on the ground that they are cruel and inhumane. Of the 37
states with the penalty, all but one perform executions through injection.

More than 225 convicted murderers await lethal injection in Pennsylvania,
where Gov. Rendell is a supporter of capital punishment. Pennsylvania has
executed three killers since 1995, but only after each had dropped
appeals.

Though they believe that the abolition of the death penalty will pass,
Democratic officials in New Jersey don't guarantee it.

With party discipline stricter in the Assembly, the change should pass
more easily there. In the Senate, "we expect the vote to be close," said
Jim Manion, spokesman for Senate Democrats.

Assembly Minority Leader Alex DeCroce (R., Morris) said Republicans in his
chamber, like those in the Senate, had no party line on the issue.

"I'm not convinced as yet that we should give up on the death penalty,"
DeCroce said. But, he added, "I could change my mind by the time of the
vote. It depends on how my district feels."

Sister Helen Prejean, a Roman Catholic nun and prominent opponent of the
death penalty whose story was featured in the movie Dead Man Walking, came
to Trenton this month to add star power to the push to pass the
legislation.

"This is such a special moment," she said. "New Jersey is going to be a
beacon on the hill."

In an interview, Richard C. Dieter, executive director of the Death
Penalty Information Center, a Washington research group that urges an end
to executions, said recent legislative moves to stop capital punishment
had fallen a few votes short in Colorado, Nebraska and New Mexico.

If abolition passes in New Jersey, Dieter said, "it could snowball."

State Sen. Gerald Cardinale (R., Bergen), one of the most conservative
lawmakers in Trenton, promised to lead a last-ditch effort to block the
change.

"There are crimes so shocking and despicable that the only just response
is the imposition of the ultimate penalty - death," Cardinale said.

At a news conference last week, he was joined by New York Law School
professor Robert Blecker, who Cardinale's staff said had been described as
the "leading voice in academia in favor of the death penalty."

Blecker said a series of recent research studies suggested that murders
dropped in states as executions climbed.

"The evidence is mounting, and it's become very embarrassing to the
abolitionists," he said.

Celeste Fitzgerald, executive director of New Jerseyans for Alternatives
to the Death Penalty, disputed Blecker's characterization of the studies.
Her special commission examined them, Fitzgerald said, and believes that
the research was inconclusive.