New Jersey to become first state in 40 years to abolish death penalty.
New Jersey's "legislature completed action" Thursday, "on a bill to abolish the death penalty." When Gov. Jon S. Corzine (D) "signs the legislation, New Jersey will become the first state to do so in four decades." The state "will substitute life in prison without parole."
This "vote is one of the clearest signs yet of how much the country's attitude toward the death penalty is changing. After peaking in 1999, the number of executions nationwide has steadily dropped, down to 42 this year." It may be due, in part, "to court battles over the most widely used system of lethal injections, an issue now before the U.S. Supreme Court." In addition, "[l]egal scholars say the number of inmates proven by DNA to be wrongly convicted is a big factor." Currently, "at least five other states" are "considering a similar move," and "opponents of capital punishment hope New Jersey will start a trend." Eight men are currently on the state's death row.
New Jersey Assembly "voted 44-36 to replace the death sentence with life in prison without parole." In January, a "special state commission found...that the death penalty was a more expensive sentence than life in prison, hasn't deterred murder, and risks killing an innocent person." Republicans "had sought to retain the death penalty for those who murder law enforcement officials, rape and murder children, and terrorists." But the Democrat-controlled state Senate "rejected the idea." Although the state "reinstated the death penalty in 1982, six years after the U.S. Supreme Court allowed states to resume executions, no one has been executed" in New Jersey "since 1963."
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