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Post by Anja on Jun 9, 2006 12:21:15 GMT -5
Officials to begin study of NJ death penalty
A special commission formed to study whether New Jersey's death penalty should be revised or even abolished was to hold its 1st meeting Friday, beginning work that is to conclude with a November report.
The group was formed earlier this year to study capital punishment in a state that reinstated the death penalty in 1982, but hasn't executed anyone since 1963. The state has 10 men on death row, but the legislation that created the commission imposed a moratorium on executions until 60 days after the panel completes its work.
No execution was imminent when the moratorium was imposed.
The commission has until Nov. 15 to complete recommendations to Gov. Jon S. Corzine and legislators.
Corzine, a Democrat, opposes the death penalty. He is the first elected New Jersey governor to oppose it since Brendan Bryne, who left office in January 1982.
The commission was formed to study whether the state's death penalty law is fairly applied, how much it costs, whether it deters crime and if it should be abolished.
It was largely supported by both death penalty foes, who want to see the practice end, and supporters who contend the law is so unwieldy it makes executions impossible.
Last year, New Jersey Policy Perspective, a liberal think tank, said the state has spent $253 million in the past 23 years on a death penalty that hasn't been used.
Though the bill imposed a moratorium, the state was already temporarily barred from executing anyone under a February 2004 court ruling that determined the state couldn't execute anyone until it revised procedures on how the penalty would be imposed. The court raised concern about lack of public access to executions and whether the state could handle last-second stays issued after lethal drugs were administered.
Sister Helen Prejean, of "Dead Man Walking" fame, visited the Statehouse last year and lobbied lawmakers to eliminate the death penalty.
New Jersey was the 3rd state to impose a death penalty moratorium. Maryland and Illinois instituted death penalty moratoriums to study the issue, though Maryland revoked its moratorium.
(source: Newsday)
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Post by SoulTrainOz on Jul 21, 2006 1:20:29 GMT -5
Commission set to begin weighing whether capital punishment should be abolished
The U.S. Supreme Court banned capital punishment for re tarded people and juveniles after concluding that such executions offend evolving standards of decency. A former governor of Illinois emp tied its death row because of concerns that it housed innocent men.
Today, a state commission will begin considering whether New Jersey should go even further. In the first of several planned hear ings, the panel will hear public comment on whether the state should abolish its death penalty, which has gone unused since its reinstatement 24 years ago.
"The death penalty does not have a place in New Jersey," said Celeste Fitzgerald, executive di rector of New Jerseyans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. "Our experience with it over the last decades shows it has been a failure."
Former state Sen. John Russo, who sponsored the 1982 law reinstating capital punishment and sits on the 13-member study commission, disagrees.
"The public has to feel there is a punishment that fits the crime," Russo said. "It's not as important that we execute a lot of people as that the penalty is there for those unusually vicious murders."
On a personal level, perhaps no one has more at stake than death row inmate John Martini and the widow of the man he kidnapped and murdered in 1989.
Martini, 75, is down to his final appeal, raising an argument that one judge has already rejected as "reaching for straws."
Marilyn Flax remembers the day in 1989 when she tried to rescue her husband, Fair Lawn businessman Irving Flax, by delivering a $25,000 ransom to Martini. After collecting the money, Mar tini, already on the run from a double murder in Arizona, eluded the FBI and killed Flax with 3 shots to the head.
"There are certain killers the death penalty was designed for, and John Martini is one of them," Flax said. "He should have been executed many years ago."
Flax said she is "very angry" that lawmakers have imposed a moratorium on executions until the commission completes its study.
"I feel this commission is just a stall tactic," she said. "New Jersey politicians are ignoring the law rather than enforcing it."
Tom Rosenthal, a spokesman for the state Office of the Public Defender, which represents Mar tini, said, "It's not whether any convicted murderer does or does not deserve the death penalty. It's whether this state or any state can develop a fair system to make that determination."
Whether the death penalty is discriminatory, and what it costs, are among the questions the commission is expected to address.
Today's hearing, scheduled for 2 p.m. in the Statehouse Annex in Trenton, will focus on 3 basic questions: Does the death penalty serve a legitimate purpose, such as deterring crime? It is worth the risk of executing the in nocent? Is it consistent with evolving standards of decency?
DETERRENCE
Russo, a former prosecutor, said his argument for capital punishment has always been that no lesser punishment is adequate for some particularly brutal murders.
"I never argued it was a deterrent," he said.
Other supporters of capital punishment have made that argu ment, and the U.S. Supreme Court allowed executions to resume in 1976 in part out of a belief that they would deter murders.
Scholars have reached conflicting results. Some say capital punishment has no effect on murder rates, though one econometric analysis concluded that each execution saves 18 lives.
Writing last November in the Michigan Law Review, Joanna Shepherd, a professor at Emory University, explained those contra dictions. She concluded that the death penalty does deter murder, but only in 6 states, including Texas, that perform a lot of executions.
In states that use it infrequently, she found, it backfires be cause the "brutalizing effect" outweighs deterrence.
"To achieve deterrence, states must generally execute many people," Shepherd concluded. "If a state is unwilling to establish such a large execution program, it should consider abandoning capital punishment."
RISK OF MISTAKE
A study by 2 Columbia University law professors of capital appeals from 1973 to 1995 found seri ous errors in nearly seven out of 10 cases. They concluded that the death penalty system was "collaps ing under the weight of its own mistakes."
Richard Dieter, executive direc tor of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C., said 123 death row inmates nationwide have been exonerated by juries or prosecutors since 1973. He said there is "evidence, but not in controvertible proof, that some in nocent people may have been executed."
Recent investigations by newspapers and law professors have suggested Texas executed 3 innocent men and Missouri mistakenly took the life of one.
"Don't tell me about Texas and Kansas and Alabama," Russo said. "This is not those states. In New Jersey, the risk is so minute, it does not warrant consideration."
Assistant Public Defender Dale Jones said, "I don't think New Jersey is in a position to say, 'We're smarter, we're better, we're infallible.' That sort of argument borders on arrogance."
STANDARDS OF DECENCY
The New Jersey Supreme Court has repeatedly rejected arguments that death is cruel and unusual punishment.
Worldwide, 87 nations have abolished capital punishment for all crimes. The U.S. is among 71 nations that punish crimes such as murder with death; another 11 nations have capital punishment for extraordinary crimes such as genocide. The U.S. ranked 4th last year in the number of executions, surpassed only by China, Iran and Saudi Arabia.
"A civilized society doesn't need the death penalty," Fitzgerald said. "We have other means to protect society from dangerous offenders."
Supporters of capital punishment say decency cannot be judged in a vacuum.
"How decent is it to rape and murder a child?" Russo asked.
Flax said that compared with death from cancer or Lou Gehrig's disease, lethal injection is "a pretty easy way to die."
"Quite frankly," she said, "my husband had a worse death."
(source: The Star Ledger)
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Post by SoulTrainOz on Jul 21, 2006 1:24:52 GMT -5
With a study commission set to begin deliberating whether the state's death penalty procedures ought to be changed or abolished, opponents of the penalty focused today on several New Jerseyans who served time for heinous crimes of which they were later found innocent.
New Jerseyans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty released a report chronicling 25 cases in New Jersey in which convictions were later overturned.
One of the featured cases involved Larry Peterson, who served 18 years for rape and murder in Burlington County. He tried for a decade to get DNA testing, which finally cleared him last year. The prosecutor dropped the case in May.
"It was a mistake by the state that stole 18 years of my life and could have easily taken my life,'' Peterson said at a Statehouse news conference.
Peterson was one example advocates cite in arguing false testimony, eyewitness error or prosecutorial misconduct could cause an innocent person to be executed in New Jersey, which hasn't used the death penalty since 1963.
'Those who think that innocent people do not get convicted and never be sentenced to die are dead wrong,'' said Celeste Fitzgerald, director of New Jerseyans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.
This year, lawmakers enacted an official moratorium on executions until January 2007 while a study commission examines the economics, ethics, effects and possible alternatives to the death penalty in a report due in November.
That panel is scheduled to hear testimony this afternoon about whether the death penalty is a deterrent, still meets standards of decency and whether the benefits of the punishment outweighs the risks of executing an innocent person.
(source: Courier News)
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Post by SoulTrainOz on Jul 21, 2006 1:31:25 GMT -5
Report on wrongly imprisoned Jerseyans fuels death-penalty debate
On the day a state death penalty study panel considered the risks of executing innocent people, opponents of capital punishment released a report documenting the cases of 25 New Jerseyans who spent time in prison for serious crimes they did not commit.
The report, "Innocence Lost in New Jersey," could fuel already-impassioned arguments against execution. New Jerseyans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, which sponsored the report, is among the groups arguing that the risks of putting innocent people to death are too great to continue to impose the death sentence.
"There are 25 cases described in the report, but those cases are illustrative only," said its author, Sandra K. Manning. "There is simply no way to know the exact number of individuals who are actually innocent. What binds these stories together is that in each and every case the state was absolutely certain of the defendant's guilt, and in each and every case, the state was absolutely wrong."
New Jersey reinstated the death penalty in 1982, though it hasn't executed anyone since 1963.
A special commission studying capital punishment took testimony Wednesday from criminal justice experts and wrongly convicted former prisoners. The panel has until Nov. 15 to submit its recommendations to Gov. Jon S. Corzine and the Legislature on whether New Jersey's capital punishment law needs to be revised or done away with.
The state has 10 men on death row, but the legislation that created the commission imposed a moratorium on executions until after the panel completes its work.
No execution was imminent when the moratorium was imposed.
On Wednesday, Barry Scheck, a defense lawyer in the O.J. Simpson murder trial and founder of The Innocence Project, a legal clinic that promotes post-conviction DNA testing, promoted New Jersey's anti-death penalty advocacy.
"The risk of executing an innocent is something that - in light of recent DNA exonerations across the country, recent press reports of individuals who were executed who may well be innocent - this is a risk that no sensible person can minimize or overlook," Scheck said.
Scheck said 181 convicts have been released from prisons across the country after DNA testing proved their innocence. Fourteen of those cases involved people on death row and seven had pleaded guilty to the capital crimes they later were cleared of.
"The one thing that these DNA cases teach us is that we have to be humble and appreciate what we don't know about the system - there are so many unknowable sources of error," Scheck said. "So the risk of convicting the innocents is great."
Death penalty opponents also pointed to the high cost of capital cases.
New Jersey spends $11 million a year on capital cases over the regular costs of imprisonment, said Celeste Fitzgerald, of New Jerseyans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.
But, it was the impassioned stories of wrongly convicted former prisoners that may have the most lasting impact on the panel.
Larry Peterson, 55, who spent 18 years in prison following a 1989 murder conviction before DNA evidence freed him last year, said being imprisoned robbed him of his family, friends and career.
"I have one message to share with the state commission today," said Peterson, "and that message is this: DNA evidence allowed me to finally walk out of prison a free man. As long as the death penalty exists in New Jersey, the next innocent person may not."
(source: Associated Press)
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Post by SoulTrainOz on Jul 21, 2006 2:43:04 GMT -5
Daughter of slain P'ville couple argues some deserve execution
It would be a sad day if death-row inmate Brian Wakefield were executed by the state, but not as sad as the day in 2001 when Wakefield killed Richard and Shirley Hazard and set fire to their bodies in their Pleasantville home, their daughter said Wednesday.
Sharon Hazard-Johnson, of Mays Landing, made her comments at the 1st public hearing held by the commission charged with studying capital punishment in New Jersey. The panel has until Nov. 15 to recommend whether the state's death-penalty law should be revised or even abolished.
During her testimony, Hazard-Johnson, 50, expressed concern that the panel was "stacked" with members who plan to eliminate capital punishment, and she urged the members to keep an open mind.
"Is this personal?" Hazard-Johnson asked. "Yes, it is. But he (Wakefield) is the one who performed the acts that got him and me where we are today."
Hazard-Johnson and retired Passaic County Prosecutor Marilyn G. Zdobinski were the only witnesses who asked the commission to keep New Jersey's death penalty. The other 13 witnesses asked the panel to replace capital punishment with life in prison without the possibility of parole.
"The death penalty . creates a culture of killing," said Lorry Post, whose 29-year-old daughter, Lisa Price, was murdered by her husband in 1988.
The husband is now serving a 20-year sentence in Georgia and will be released in 2008. Post would rather have seen his son-in-law get a life sentence, but not death, he said after the hearing.
"We are a society of laws and compassion and life, and no one has the right to take another life," said Post, who lived in Cape May for 11 years until he moved last year to Mt. Laurel.
The study commission was formed earlier this year to examine capital punishment in a state that brought back the death penalty in 1982 but has not executed anyone since 1963.
9 men are now on death row in this state. However, New Jersey has suspended lethal injections until 60 days after the commission completes its work.
Many of the witnesses at the hearing mentioned the risk of executing an innocent person as a reason to abolish capital punishment. Nationwide, 123 people have been exonerated from death row in the past several decades, although none has been from New Jersey.
"The fact that we have not had someone on death row exonerated has been luck," said Sandra K. Manning, of New Jerseyans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. "We will not always be lucky. We will make mistakes."
Manning co-authored a report, released Wednesday, that listed 25 people in New Jersey who were convicted of crimes they did not commit.
One of those people, Larry Peterson, served 18 years in prison on rape and murder charges before he was exonerated in May. Peterson told the panel that prosecutors had sought the death penalty for him.
"If the state would have made the mistake of executing me, it would have been an irrevocable mistake," said Peterson, of Pemberton Township, Burlington County. "If you take a life, you can't turn around and correct the wrong."
Christian and Jewish religious leaders also advocated an end to the death penalty.
"We cannot teach respect for life by taking life," said Bishop John M. Smith, of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Trenton.
The commission's next public hearing is scheduled for Sept. 13.
After the hearing, one of the panel's members, Kathy Garcia, said since her nephew was killed in 1984 at age 21, she has as much compassion for murderers as they have for their victims - none.
But Garcia, a Moorestown Township, BurlingtonCounty resident and a trustee of New Jersey Crime Victims Law Center, called New Jersey's death penalty a "cruel joke" on victims' families because the state has not executed anyone in 4 decades.
"When they get a verdict of death penalty and it's not carried out, it's a revictimization for them," Garcia said, adding that this is why more supporters of the death penalty have not testified before the panel.
"Those in favor are so burned out from the system," Garcia said. "You won't see them."
(source: Press of Atlantic City)
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Post by SoulTrainOz on Jul 21, 2006 2:46:50 GMT -5
Emotions fuel public hearing on death penalty
WHAT'S NEXT----The next public hearing for the New Jersey Death Penalty Study Commission is scheduled for Sept. 13 at the State House. The time and room have not been set.
Those who served time for crimes they were later proven to have not committed stood testament to the fact that the court system can make mistakes. A prison scholar said life without parole may be a better deterrent than executions. Religious leaders say people don't approve of the death penalty.
But during the 1st public hearing of the New Jersey Death Penalty Study Commission Wednesday, only 2 spoke in favor of the concept that some convicted murderers deserve to die.
"The commission's stacked," said Sharon Hazard-Johnson of Mays Landing, a proponent of capital punishment since her elderly parents were murdered in their home 5 years ago.
"When our parents' murderer is executed by the state, it will be a sad day," Hazard-Johnson said. "But it won't be anywhere near as sad as the day he willfully, knowingly and purposefully terrorized and murdered them."
Hazard-Johnson said she could accept an end to the death penalty if it came through a public referendum instead of a recommendation from a 13-member panel and then the legislative process.
The Rev. M. William Howard Jr., the commission chairman, said there are proponents and opponents on the committee but that members will keep an open mind before issuing a report to the Legislature by Dec. 15 that will recommend whether the state's death penalty procedures need to be changed or abolished.
"We've all pledged that we will be open to hearing persuasive arguments and data brought to us by an open hearing," Howard said.
Howard said no one was prevented from testifying and that the numbers leaning against the death penalty may reflect public opinion. Commission member Kathleen Garcia, who supports the death penalty, however, said it's more of a sign of the organized effort to abolish it.
Garcia, who lost a nephew to murder, said she hopes to fix a system she called a joke because of endless appeals that "revictimizes" families whose members were murdered.
No one has been executed in New Jersey since 1963. Lawmakers enacted a moratorium until January 2007 while the commission studies the issue.
"I have as much compassion for these individuals as they had for the victims, which is none," Garcia said.
The organized effort in New Jersey, led by New Jerseyans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, brought in several people who served time for crimes for which they were later exonerated. The group also released a report, titled "Innocence Lost in New Jersey," profiling 25 such cases, though none involved an inmate on death row.
One of the featured cases involved Larry Peterson, who served 18 years for rape and murder in Burlington County. He tried for a decade to get DNA testing, which finally cleared him last year. The prosecutor dropped the case in May.
"It was a mistake by the state that stole 18 years of my life and could have easily taken my life," Peterson said at a State House news conference.
Faith leaders, representing Jews, Catholics and United Methodists, said societal views have shifted away from capital punishment.
"People of faith, people in the pews believe that capital punishment, taking of life by the state is cruel and unusual," said the Rev. Jack Johnson of the First United Methodist Church in Trenton. "There is clearly a moral indignation and repugnancy by persons with a faith and evolving standards of decency that precludes the death penalty."
Lorry Post, who founded the anti-death penalty group after his daughter was murdered by her husband in 1988, said the current process brings no finality, is unfair, wastes money and risks killing innocent people.
"It creates a culture of killings, and it's a horrible, horrible thing, which almost matches the horror of what some of us have lost," Post said.
(source: Courier Post)
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Post by SoulTrainOz on Jul 21, 2006 2:50:11 GMT -5
Death penalty foes call for end to law, say life in prison is option
To victims' kin, justice is served by execution
Opponents of capital punishment yesterday dominated the first public hearing by a commission studying whether New Jersey should continue to have a death penalty.
Even though the state hasn't executed anyone since reinstating the death penalty in 1982, all but 2 of 14 witnesses who testified at yesterday's two-hour hearing in Trenton called for an end to the capital punishment law. They said the death penalty offends modern notions of decency and risks executing someone who is innocent. Several proposed life without parole as an alternative.
Support for capital punishment came from a woman whose parents were murdered by death row inmate Brian Wakefield and the prosecutor who tried John Martini, whose final bid to avoid execution is being considered by the state Supreme Court. Both witnesses said carrying out those death sentences would provide justice to the victims and their families.
Much of the testimony focused on the risk of executing someone who is innocent. Barry Scheck, co-director of the Innocence Project, said nationwide DNA testing has exonerated 182 defendants, 14 of whom were on death row.
Larry Peterson of Pemberton came close to being one of them. Spared a death sentence by a jury that convicted him of rape-murder, he spent 18 years in New Jersey prisons until DNA testing proved his innocence. He was freed last August.
"If you take a life, you can't turn around and correct the wrong," Peterson told the commission.
Earlier in the day, Sandra Manning, a lawyer and chairwoman of New Jerseyans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, released her report detailing 25 cases of wrongful convictions in the state.
"In each and every case, the state was absolutely certain of the defendant's guilt, and in each and every case the state was wrong," Manning said.
Sharon Hazard-Johnson of Mays Landing, whose parents, Richard and Shirley Hazard, were murdered in their Pleasantville home by Wakefield, said his execution "will be a sad day," but one he has brought on himself.
"Our position is that our parents' murderer must be executed by the State of New Jersey," Hazard-Johnson, testifying for herself and her siblings, said. "It's the law."
Trenton Bishop John M. Smith, testifying for the state's 7 Catholic bishops, told the 13 members of the study commission, "The death penalty in our view is not consistent with evolving standards of decency.
"The death penalty diminishes all of us," Smith said. "We cannot teach respect for life by taking life."
Rabbi Gerald Zelizer of Metuchen, past president of the International Rabbinical Assembly, and the Rev. Jack Johnson of Trenton, testifying for the New Jersey Council of Churches, also opposed the death penalty.
Marilyn Zdobinski, a retired assistant Bergen County prosecutor who tried Martini for the kidnapping and murder of Fair Lawn businessman Irving Flax, urged the commission to consider his widow.
"Marilyn Flax went through what no other person should have to go through," Zdobinski said, describing how Flax delivered $25,000 ransom only to learn her husband was later killed with 3 shots to the head. "She's been waiting for justice for, now, 17 years."
Edith Frank, a director of the League of Women Voters of New Jersey, said it favors replacing capital punishment with life imprisonment without parole. A better name for such punishment "might be death by incarceration, because these people are sentenced to die in prison," Robert Johnson, a professor at American University in Washington, D.C., added.
Peterson assured the commissioners that "life in prison is hell, every day."
The commission is expected to schedule additional hearings before issuing its recommendations to the governor and Legislature.
(source: Newark Star-Ledger)
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