New Jersey Legislative Panel Advocates Abolition of Death Penalty

New Jersey Legislative Panel Advocates Abolition of Death Penalty

January 2, 2007 6:36 p.m. EST

Beth Shankle-Anderson. Esq.

- All Headline News Legal Reporter
Philadelphia, PA (AHN)

- A New Jersey legislative panel is calling for the abolition of the death penalty because, according to the panel, it fails to deter murderers, burdens the state financially, and is inconsistent with evolving standards of decency.

The New Jersey Death Penalty Study Commission which was set up last year by state lawmakers, argued the death penalty should be replaced with life imprisonment in a maximum-security jail without parole.

The 13-person panel, which represented police, prosecutors, public defenders, the judiciary, and families of murder victims, found that the death penalty does not achieve its goal of deterring the worst murders, and that the legal costs of it outweigh those of keeping a criminal in prison for life.

The Commission found that life imprisonment would ensure public safety and the rights of murder victims' families, while removing the risk of executing someone in error. "The penological interest in executing a small number of persons guilty of murder is not sufficiently compelling to justify the risk of making an irreversible mistake," the 133-page official report said.

The report also recommends that any cost savings from abolishing the death penalty should be used to provide benefits and services for the families of murder victims.

New Jersey's last execution occurred in 1963 and the state currently has nine inmates on death row.

Thirty-eight states currently have the death penalty, although Florida suspended its death penalty in December after a botched lethal injection. Also last month, a California federal judge found that the state's lethal injection methods caused an "undue risk" of pain "so extreme" that it may violate a constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.