Time for capital
punishment to die
EDITORIAL, Home News
Tribune Online, May 13, 2007
New Jersey -- A state Senate
committee's decision last week to move a bill abolishing the death penalty to
the floor for a full vote was a courageous and welcome act, and we hope both the
full Senate and the Assembly can gather the strength to pass this
groundbreaking, and long overdue, legislation.
Like many in the state, this page has long been morally opposed to the death
penalty; and we continue to embrace the standards of decency explicitly and
implicitly at work in a society that refuses to kill even its worst offenders.
There is no question, however, that the most important foes of the death penalty
have been those who have no moral opposition to it; some of them were members of
the state task force that issued a January report recommending abolition to the
Legislature. There is nothing idealistic about these folks' position; they
are pragmatists. And their conclusions are devastating precisely because
they are bound up in the cold, hard realities of the law itself.
Scores of these men and women — many prosecutors and policemen among them — have
determined that the law is unworkable; like the human beings who control it, it
is arbitrary and capricious; it makes mistakes. And no law that extracts
the ultimate punishment can afford to be less than perfect.
In New Jersey, the system designed to guard against error and passion extracts
its own price: years of appeal and delay. Although the state
Legislature reinstated the death penalty in 1982, no one has been executed here
since 1963. The overwhelming majority of those sentenced to death in the
25 years since the reinstatement have had their sentences overturned on one or
other of the numerous appeals guaranteed by the sentence. A handful remain
on death row, still working through appeals. Regardless, there has been a
moratorium in the state since 2005.
These necessary checks in New Jersey's law are most grinding on the relatives of
the victims. A sentence of life in prison without parole would effectively
end things; as it stands, years go by without closure. The appeals are
also expensive. It costs far more to try to put someone to death than it
does simply to allow him to live out his life behind bars. And there is no
evidence that a death penalty deters murderers.
In the end, regardless of how one feels about the death penalty on a
philosophical level, the imperfections in the law, and the impossibility of
finding a workable balance between constitutional protections and victims'
rights, leave the law fatally flawed. It simply can not be made to work
effectively.
Others disagree. Still, it is somewhat jarring to read the screed put out
by Sen. Joseph Kyrillos, R-Monmouth, Middlesex, in response to the Senate
committee's vote on Thursday. Tying the vote to the arrest of the would-be
terrorists at Fort Dix, the senator said the death penalty was needed to defend
against future terrorist attacks.
Let's be clear about would-be terrorists: most of them are obsessed with
death; many choose to commit suicide as part of their terrorist act.
Arguing that the death penalty would deter them is ludicrous. Indeed, we
already have seen that for those who escape death in the act itself, the threat
of a death sentence in court is simply a way for them to embrace martyrdom.
New Jersey, which would become the first state to overturn its reinstated death
penalty, has a chance to lead the country toward a more humane system of
punishment. Weakness in this case lies with failing to act, not with
overturning an unjust and senseless law.
The Home News Tribune (thnt.com)
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