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The Star-Ledger
Stage is set for
fight about death penalty
by Robert Schwaneberg,
nj.com from the Web, December 3, 2007
Efforts to kill New Jersey's
never-used death penalty law will kick into high gear this week, beginning with
a hearing Monday.
Legislation to replace capital punishment with life imprisonment without parole
is scheduled to be heard Monday by the Senate Budget Committee and next Monday
by the Assembly Law and Public Safety Committee. Leaders of both the
Assembly and Senate would like the bill to pass by the time the lame-duck
legislative session ends on Jan. 8.
If signed by Gov. Jon Corzine -- an opponent of capital punishment -- New Jersey
would be the first state to abolish its death penalty by legislative action
since 1965, when Iowa and West Virginia repealed their capital punishment
statutes.
"It would be historic," said Richard Dieter, director of the Death Penalty
Information Center in Washington. "It's the first time in 40 years some
state has taken legislative action to abolish the death penalty. It's hard to
take that final step."
New Jersey had a death penalty law until the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated
capital punishment in 1972. Since the nation's highest court reinstated
the death penalty four years later, 1,099 convicted murderers have been executed
by states.
None were in New Jersey, which reinstated capital punishment in 1982 but hasn't
carried out an execution since 1963, when Ralph J. Hudson, an Atlantic City man,
was electrocuted for the stabbing death of his estranged wife. There are
now eight men on death row.
In January, a commission that included prosecutors, defense lawyers, clergymen,
a police chief and relatives of murder victims recommended replacing New
Jersey's death penalty with life imprisonment with no possibility of parole.
The Senate Judiciary Committee approved a bill to do that in May.
But a few lawmakers and outspoken survivors of murder victims are making a
determined effort to keep capital punishment on the books.
The first test comes Monday in the Senate Budget Committee, where the bill to
abolish the death penalty was sent for an analysis of its impact on the state
budget. That analysis was completed Nov. 21 by the nonpartisan Office of
Legislative Services, which said "it cannot quantify with accuracy the costs or
savings."
Posted Dec. 2, 2007
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