New Jersey Senate Votes to Abolish the Death Penalty

The New York Times has, "New Jersey Nears Repeal of Death Penalty."

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.

New Yorkers Have Learned We Can Live Without The Death Penalty

Passage of Yet Another Death Penalty Bill Called Cynical
On July 16, the New York State legislature responded to the tragic death of a police officer shot in the line of duty by passing its third death penalty bill this year. Below is a statement on the Senate’s action by David Kaczynski, Executive Director of New Yorkers Against the Death Penalty.

July 16 2007 - “We join all New Yorkers in grieving for the recent loss of Police Officer Timoshenko, and other officers and troopers who have died in the service of all of us.

“But State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno knows that today’s passage of a death penalty bill all but identical to one passed earlier this year is a cynical and empty gesture that has no chance of becoming law.

“He knows, as New Yorkers have learned, that the death penalty does not represent swift or sure punishment. No one has been executed in New York in 44 years.

“It is unconscionable that Senator Bruno has led his chamber in this cynical exercise without addressing the plague of wrongful convictions that has seen 26 New Yorkers exonerated and freed after serving long sentences for murders or rapes they did not commit.

“The principal effect of the death penalty is to create a lot more work for lawyers at the taxpayer’s expense without any public benefit. A mandatory sentence of life imprisonment without parole for those who murder police is a tough sentence fully enforceable in New York State. It protects those who protect us without wasting untold millions of dollars on a decades-long appeals process and without risking the execution of an innocent person.

“The death penalty is a system that buries its worst mistakes. Trying to reinstate the death penalty before tackling the plague of wrongful convictions is a cynical gesture aimed at diverting attention from other issues before the legislature.

“Senator Bruno knows the measure will not become law, no matter how many times he gets his conference to pass it..

“New Yorkers have learned we can live without the death penalty. It is time for Senator Bruno to catch up with the people he represents.”