Caraballo & Bateman: Death Penalty Repeal on Track for Final Passage Thursday

CARABALLO & BATEMAN: DEATH PENALTY REPEAL ON TRACK FOR FINAL PASSAGE THURSDAY

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

(TRENTON) - Assemblymen Wilfredo Caraballo and Christopher "Kip" Bateman today urged a key Assembly panel to heed the findings of the New Jersey Death Penalty Study Commission and abolish the state's capital punishment law and replace it with a sentence of life imprisonment without possibility of parole.

After hearing from law enforcement officials, clergy, family members of murder victims, and study commission members, the Assembly Law and Public Safety Committee voted 5 to 1 to release Caraballo and Bateman's bipartisan death penalty repeal bill (A-3716).

The lawmakers say the committee action puts the measure on track for a floor vote in the General Assembly on Thursday.  If passed, New Jersey would become the first state where both legislative houses have approved a repeal of 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.

If enacted, New Jersey would become the 14th state without a death penalty, 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.

Caraballo issued the following statement:

"Today's committee vote constitutes unfinished business on a comprehensive report that was broad in scope and judicious in its findings.

"Unlike other issues that come before the Legislature, this is one that truly has life and death consequences.  Lawmakers need to think hard and ask themselves what side of this question they want to err on - life or death?

"It's time New Jersey got out of the execution business.  Capital punishment is costly, discriminatory, immoral and barbaric.  We're a better state than one that puts people to death.

"New Jersey should seize the moment.  I am confident that if New Jersey enacts a repeal, other states will soon follow our lead.

"The exonerations of death row inmates resulting from DNA testing say we should take this course.  The fact that murder rates are 40 percent higher in death penalty states says we should take this course.  The fact that our current death penalty never gets used says we should take this course."

Bateman issued the following statement:

"The study commission issued an overwhelming call to end this failed system and replace it with life in prison without parole.

"Our death penalty law, it revealed, costs more than locking someone away for life, does not serve a legitimate penological purpose, such as deterring future crime, is not worth the very real risk of executing an innocent person and runs contrary to our evolving standards of decency.

"The commission heard from dozens of family members and victims' advocates who said the death penalty had harmed them.  Some shared their deep moral conviction that more killing would dishonor the memory of their loved one.  Others told heart breaking stories of how the longer capital process forced them to relive their trauma over and over again.  All of them were clear that nothing the state could possibly do to the killer would lessen their pain.

"It's now the Legislature's turn to take action.

"We can, as a state, continue to pretend that having the death penalty on the books is in our best interests, or we can, collectively, do 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.  The time has certainly come."

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