New Jersey Abolishes Death Penalty
In what will make many Americans who strongly oppose the death penalty very happy – and also quite some outside the US such as myself – very happy, “New Jersey lawmakers on Thursday became the first in the nation to abolish the death penalty since the Supreme Court restored it in 1976.”
NJ’s General Assembly, which is controlled by Democrats, voted “44 to 36 on Thursday to repeal the death penalty and replace it with life in prison without parole.” This vote followed a similar vote this last Monday by the state’s Senate. The Governor of New Jersey, a Democrat and opponent of the death penalty, will sign the legislation, he has said.
The reason, well, one of the reasons for the repeal bill is that a state commission recommended recently that “the death penalty ‘is inconsistent with evolving standards of decency’” and should therefore be abolished. Something with which I full heartedly agree.
But there’s more to the death penalty, or abolishing it, than that. As the WaPo points out, “it costs more to keep a prisoner indefinitely on death row than incarcerated for life.” In other words, it’s financially more attractive to keep someone locked up for decades than to put him on death row and then to kill him.
What’s interesting in the case of New Jersey, however, is that the public doesn’t want to abolish capital punishment. This means that the Democrats who pushed this issue have quite some political courage. After all, it could very well backfire.
Justin Gardner responds to the news:
In theory I support the death penalty. I’m of the opinion that anyone that commits particularly heinous acts of murder, kills multiple people, kills children, or kills police officers should be put to death. In fact after a few drinks I’d probably add serial rapists and child molesters to the list. Having said that I also think its important to look at the history of the death penalty and consider the facts that its application presents us. We’ve executed innocent people, those that can afford better lawyers normally manage to avoid it, and its costlier than life in prison. Given the choice of supporting an irrevocable penalty that is unfair, imperfect, and financially imprudent or abolishing the penalty altogether I’m for scrapping it.
More at the LA Times.
H/t to Memeorandum.
It made the news this morning here in France, too. The morning team on i-tele seemed to welcome it and it was presented as a rather positive change. Me? Well I am a supporter of the death penalty for heinous crimes but also of the notion that every jurisdiction should have the right to choose for itself whether they would like it.
Is it really such a cost saving, though? From the TV report I watched I got the impression that no one had been executed in New Jersey for decades anyway and that only 8 people were on death row. Could not the anti-death penalty Governor simply have commuted the sentences of the 8 and promised to do the same on any others that arise?
"What’s interesting in the case of New Jersey, however, is that the public doesn’t want to abolish capital punishment. This means that the Democrats who pushed this issue have quite some political courage. After all, it could very well backfire."
Dems? Defying the obsolete demands and considerations of Bob, Mitch and the Man on the street? I’ll have to start searching the skies for a certain quartet of equestrians if this keeps up.
I can understand your opposition to the death penalty. It is (and should be) a supremely difficult moral decision.
However: given the realities of the U.S. (and especially European) justice systems, the likelihood is great that any murderer condemned to life in prison will be released (I understand that in Germany, for example, a "life sentence" usually means 10-15 years). So, here is my question to you: in the event that a murder is released or escapes and kills again, will you, personally, accept a share of responsibility for having let him/her live to kill again?
I, too, struggled with this issue: I am a Christian who believes in personal redemption. When you kill someone, you deny them the right to accept responsibility and repent for what they did – at least, in this life. You also run a risk of innocent people being put to death.
However, in the end, I also had to conclude that while I can oppose the death penalty in the abstract, I can not, in the name of past and future victims, oppose it in practice. A murderer that is executed will never kill again and serve warning to those that would.
Lemieux, you might want to distinguish between "life" (which frequently ends up being nothing of the kind) and "life without parole" (which generally means exactly that).
I admit that I personally have no philosophical problem with the death penalty. But practical considerations, such as those cited by Justin above, lead me to favor its abolition nonetheless.
Interesting, given the recent article that outlined the several studies that says that the death penalty actually has a deterrent effect. One study pegged the number of lives saved as between 3 and 16.
So, looks like the legislature of new Jersey is not only going against the express will of the people there but is also putting them at greater risk. Activist Government – is there no ill it can’t produce with its bumbling?
Jimmie: activist government? Is there any other kind of government? It’s not the court that outlaws it (which would indeed be ludicrous) it’s the people’s representatives. That’s not ‘activism’ that’s politics.
If they’re doing that when the people have specifically said not to, and one could make a very serious argument that a specific poll on a specific issue would work in this case, then yeah, I’d call that "activist".
To my knowledge, and if I’m wrong I apologize up front, there hasn’t been a big push in New Jersey to do away with the death penalty. There’s been no referendum. No groundswell from the electorate exists. There is a commission that touts some rather nebulous "evolving standards of decency" as if those ephemeral standards have greater sway than the democratic process.
You may like the results, Michael, but that doesn’t make the process by which it was taken was correct or democratic.
Correction, that wasn’t Justin Gardner. That was me.