ROBERTS & CARABALLO SEEK TO MAKE NEW JERSEY FIRST STATE TO LEGISLATIVELY ABOLISH DEATH PENALTY

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ROBERTS & CARABALLO SEEK TO MAKE NEW JERSEY FIRST STATE TO LEGISLATIVELY ABOLISH DEATH PENALTY

Assembly Leaders Team with 'Dead Man Walking' Author Sister Helen Prejean, Death Penalty Advocates to Announce December Action

(TRENTON) - Calling it cruel and costly, Assembly Speaker Joseph J. Roberts, Jr., and Assembly Speaker Pro-Tempore Wilfredo Caraballo today announced that they will seek to make New Jersey the first state in the country to legislatively abolish capital punishment.

Teaming with "Dead Man Walking" author Sister Helen Prejean and other death penalty opponents at a State House press conference, Roberts said a bipartisan repeal bill sponsored by  Caraballo (D-Essex) would go before the Assembly Judiciary Committee on December 6 so that it could be positioned for an Assembly floor vote on December 13.

"The New Jersey death penalty has become a paper deterrent, the epitome of false security," said Roberts (D-Camden).

Noting that states with the death penalty have higher murder rates than those without the death penalty, Roberts said the time had come to face up to the fact that New Jersey's death penalty has been a failure on the basis of cost, implementation and as a crime deterrent.

New Jersey reinstated the death penalty in 1982.  After 25 years of being on the books, the state has yet to execute a single individual under its death penalty law.

"The law has become an absolute exercise in futility," said Roberts.  "It is time to end it."

Roberts said Caraballo would play a lead role in the legislative effort.  A former state Public Advocate and a professor at Seton Hall University Law School, Caraballo has been one of the leading proponents to abolish capital punishment in New Jersey.

Caraballo is the lead sponsor on a bipartisan bill (A-3716) that would repeal the death penalty and replace it with life imprisonment without eligibility for parole.

"The bottom line of that bill is to lock murderers in jail and throw away the key," said Roberts. "Anyone who takes another person's life should rot in jail."

Roberts said there are overwhelming and compelling reasons to do away with the death penalty, including the fact that repeal was the recommendation of the 13-member New Jersey Death Penalty Study Commission, which issued a report earlier this year after nine months, five public hearings, and testimony from more than 70 witnesses - most notably survivors of homicide victims.

The Commission recommended replacing the death penalty with life in jail without possibility of parole.

Roberts noted that the new science of DNA testing has exonerated 124 people from death rows among the 50 states and that approximately 80 percent of New Jersey death sentences have been reversed for serious errors on repeal.  He said the trend nationwide is one of more and more states invoking moratoriums or refraining from using the death penalty because it is costly, discriminatory, immoral and cruel.

New Jersey, which currently has eight individuals on its death row, is one of 21 states with a moratorium invoked by the courts, executive order, or legislation.  Only 13 states do not have a death penalty.

Roberts noted that a 2005 report by the New Jersey Policy Perspective think-tank found that the state spent $253 million on its death penalty system since 1982. Roberts said the state's never-used death penalty is costing -- at a minimum -- $11 million a year.

He also noted that public opinion on capital punishment has shifted dramatically in recent years, with more and more people supporting the alternative of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

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