Corzine Signs NJ Death Penalty Ban

 
by KYW's Ed Kasuba

New Jersey governor Jon Corzine has signed into law a bill making his state the first one in four decades to abolish the death penalty.

The move is being hailed worldwide as a victory against capital punishment. Sister Helen Prejean (right), a nun who gained attention from her book and the eventual movie “Dead Man Walking," is a death penalty opponent. She points out that New Jersey’s action is being recognized in Rome, Italy, where the Colosseum is being lit for two nights:

"And the word will travel around the globe: there is a state that was the first to show life is stronger than death, that love is greater than hatred.”

The arena was home to gladiator fights and executions and is now a symbol of the fight against the death penalty.

Garden State lawmakers voted last week to replace death sentences with life in prison without parole (see related stories). The decision spares eight men on New Jersey's death row. Corzine (at signing ceremony above) also signed orders commuting the sentences of the eight men on death row to life in prison without parole.

New Jersey reinstated the death penalty in 1982, but nobody has been executed by the state since 1963. 
 

Ashley Shelton, of Pennsylvanians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, calls this exciting news:

"What is happening in New Jersey is the institutionalization of what is happening all over the country."

Which, in her view, is populations increasingly leery of executions.

Bill DiMascio, executive director of the Pennsylvania Prison Society, joins Shelton in calling for a moratorium and death penalty study, because Governor Rendell continues the long process:

"He's been signing death warrants routinely, but eventually the names of the people who are on our death row will come up and then we'll be confronted with whether we're really prepared to do this."

DiMascio says there are more than 230 people on Pennsylvania death row, making it the state with the fourth highest number in the US.

DiMascio also dislikes the sentence life-without-parole, because of its absolute nature.  He points out that even Charles Manson has a longshot chance to gain release under California's review system.