N.J. moves to abolish the death penalty

The governor is expected to sign the bill within a week.

PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER

TRENTON, N.J. — The New Jersey Legislature gave final approval Thursday to abolish the state’s death penalty, a move that Gov. Jon Corzine has pledged to sign into law.

By a vote of 44-36, the Assembly passed the measure to make New Jersey the first state to legislatively end capital punishment since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated it in 1976.

The bill, approved Monday by the state Senate, would replace death sentences with life without parole.

Corzine, a longtime death-penalty opponent, said yesterday he doubted the prospect of execution deterred killers.

He also said that capital punishment risked putting innocent people to death.

“There can be no foolproof system,” he said.

Moreover, Corzine said, execution has been an empty threat in New Jersey, which last put a killer to death in 1963.

When Corzine signs the bill, expected within a week, New Jersey will become the 14th state to ban capital punishment by law, but the first to do so since the U.S. high court re-legalized it.

The Supreme Court overturned all death sentences in the nation in 1972 but four years later laid out rules by which states could reinstate the death penalty.

The ruling led states to separate the guilt-or-innocence phase of trials from the punishment phase, holding separate hearings for each.

In contrast to New Jersey, in other states where executions were recently halted, the decisions came after a local court ruling voided the death-penalty law, as in New York, or because a governor imposed a moratorium, as in Illinois.

As lawmakers noted on the floor of the Assembly, public support for executions has weakened as 15 death-row inmates across the United States have been freed after DNA evidence showed they had been falsely convicted.

Assemblyman Wilfredo Caraballo, a Democrat from Newark and prime sponsor of the legislation, also raised a moral issue.

“Justice does not mean lowering ourselves to the same level as those who would take the lives of our loved ones,” he said.

But Assemblyman Richard A. Merkt, one of a series of Republicans who condemned the measure, said he was ashamed that the proposal had made headway.