New Jersey Must Do Away With the Death Penalty
New Jersey lawmakers are poised to make an historical decision next month – on whether to do away with the death penalty. If the legislature is in agreement, New Jersey will be the first state in the United States to abolish capital punishment since the Supreme Court reinstated it in 1976. Instead, the highest punishment will be life in prison without the possibility of parole.
According to an Associated Press news report in CBS News’ Web site (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/09/ap/national/main3481432.shtml), no one has been executed in the state of New Jersey in the last 44 years although the state currently has eight men on death row. The State Assembly is set to vote on this very important issue Dec. 13. The governor has also sent a message to the legislature that he looks forward to working with lawmakers to do away with the death penalty.
Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts Jr. told the Associated Press that the death penalty is “flawed public policy that is costly, discriminatory, immoral and cruel.” He highlighted the fact that when the state executes offenders, there is no way to go back and right a wrong.
A State committee in May recommended abolishing the death penalty, but the Senate did not consider it. The current bill was born from a finding made by a special State commission earlier this year that the death penalty was way more costly that life in prison. What’s more, the study found that the possibility of a death sentence did nothing to deter murder. Republicans in the Senate are saying that they will fight this bill and that abolishing the death penalty doesn’t solve anything.
As New Jersey criminal defense attorneys, we at Lependorf and Silverstein believe that the State of New Jersey should abolish the death penalty once and for all. We agree with Speaker Roberts that capital punishment is more expensive, unethical and brutal and doesn’t belong in a civilized society. Death penalty has done nothing and will do nothing to deter murder in our state.
Consider these facts from The Innocence Project (www.innocenceproject.org):
• Since 1989, there have been 208 post-conviction DNA exonerations in the United States. Since 2000, there have been 145 exonerations in 31 states
• 15 out of the 208 people exonerated through DNA served time on death row
If these facts show anything, it is the irrefutable fact that the justice system is not always just. It is fallible. Doing away with capital punishment and reducing it to life in prison gives the courts the leeway to correct errors that end up making the difference between life and death for innocent citizens.
