CARABALLO & BATEMAN: DEATH PENALTY REPEAL RECEIVES FINAL LEGISLATIVE APPROVAL

Measure Would Replace Never-Used Statute with Life Imprisonment without Parole

(TRENTON) - Assemblymen Wilfredo Caraballo and Christopher "Kip" Bateman today applauded the General Assembly for heeding the findings of the New Jersey Death Penalty Study Commission and giving final legislative approval to a measure to abolish the state's capital punishment law and replace it with a sentence of life imprisonment without possibility of parole.

After 2.5 hours of floor debate, the General Assembly voted 44 to 36 to pass Caraballo and Bateman's bipartisan death penalty repeal bill (A-3716).

The lawmakers said the Assembly's action all but ensures that New Jersey will become the first state to legislatively repeal a death penalty law enacted since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976.  Governor Jon S. Corzine has expressed support for repealing the death penalty and is expected to sign the measure before the end of the calendar year.

If enacted, New Jersey would become the 14th state without a death penalty in effect, joining Alaska, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia, Wisconsin and New York.

Caraballo (D-Essex) and Bateman (R-Somerset) said the bill is based on the report issued last January by the Death Penalty Study Commission, a panel that included victims' rights advocates, county prosecutors and other members of law enforcement, a retired New Jersey Supreme Court justice, and family members of murder victims.  The report found the state's capital punishment law to be deeply flawed, causing numerous legal delays at significant cost to taxpayers.  Today's vote followed more than two-and-a-half hours of testimony Monday in the Assembly Law and Public Safety Committee from law enforcement officials, clergy, family members of murder victims, and study commission members.

Caraballo issued the following statement:

"Today's vote brings dozens of New Jersey families one step closer to closure.

"The appeals process that was supposed to protect criminals from irrevocable legal mistakes has instead transformed into a never-ending delay of justice and final resolutions for the families of murder victims.

"For the sake of families that have suffered so much already, New Jersey needs to get out of the execution business.  We're a better state than one that puts people to death.

"We have seized the moment and are poised to join the ranks of other states and countries that view the death penalty as discriminatory, immoral, and barbaric.

"I am confident that once the Governor enacts this legislation, other states will quickly follow our lead.  The death penalty is neither an effective punishment nor an effective deterrent.  And by the end of the year, it hopefully will no longer be an option in New Jersey."

Bateman issued the following statement:

"Our death penalty law is fatally flawed.

"It does not protect the public, meet the critical need for justice for victims' families or eliminate the very real possibility that innocent people could be put to death.  For far too long our death penalty statute has been sustained by mythology and fiction, propped up by outdated rhetoric, when courage and common sense would have served us far better.

"The New Jersey Death Penalty Study Commission issued an overwhelming call to end this failed system and replace it with life in prison without parole and fortunately the Legislature answered.

"We are on the verge of enacting the toughest sentencing laws in the country, broadly expanding the list of crimes for which life without parole would be mandatory, and ensuring that current death-row inmates would never be eligible for parole.

"Together, we have done what a father of a murdered daughter asked me to do a long time ago: look at the facts and beyond the myths, and replace the death penalty with the tough, sensible alternative of life in prison without parole."

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