[CUADPUpdate] Step 4

[Abraham J. Bonowitz]

Hi All,

If the weather cooperates enough, the New Jersey 
Assembly will convene in a voting session at 1pm 
tomorrow (Thursday, Dec. 10)  to take step four 
in the final five steps to abolition in New 
Jersey when they consider Assembly Bill 3716 to 
abolish the death penalty.  This bill is one of 
dozens on the agenda for the session, and we have 
no idea what order they will go in.  They are 
*scheduled* to start at 1pm, but like abolition, 
these things usually start late.  We'll see.

If you have the patience, listen live at 
http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/media/live_audio.asp

We in New Jersey appreciate all of the support we 
have received from various national and state 
organizations.  I want to especially thank the 
phone banking volunteers who have been helping 
out from California, Connecticut, Tennessee, Ohio, Pennsylvania and elsewhere.

I'm sure you'll read about this from various 
sources at the end of the day.  We are hopeful that the story will be positive.

Meanwhile, click here to see a variety of 
resources: 
http://www.deathpenaltyusa.blogspot.com/  and see below for two news items.

And visit the EJUSA e-newsletter looking at how 
it was done in New Jersey at 
http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/quixote/blastContent.jsp?email_blast_KEY=1086588&t=emailwebdisplay.dwt

Yours in the Struggle,

--abe

Abraham J. Bonowitz
Field Manager, New Jerseyans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty
abe at njadp.org  *  http://www.NJADP.org
mobile: 561-371-5204  *  office: 609-278-6719  *  fax: 609-278-6859
986 S. Broad St., Trenton, NJ  08611


http://www.nj.com/newsflash/jersey/index.ssf?/base/news-29/119748146571370.xml&storylist=jersey



Death penalty foes hope N.J. will inspire others to follow suit

12/12/2007, 12:35 p.m. ET
By TOM HESTER Jr.
The Associated Press

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) ­ New Jersey Sen. Robert Martin is mindful of history.

"One hundred years from now I hope we will be 
remembered for having had the courage to be 
leaders in advancing this cause for a more 
civilized society," said Martin, R-Morris.

The cause: Abolishing the death penalty.

The New Jersey is poised to give final 
legislative approval on Thursday to abolishing 
the death penalty, becoming the first state to do 
so since 1965 when Iowa and West Virginia abolished it.

The state Senate approved the bill Monday; The 
Assembly will vote Thursday and is expected to 
pass it. Democratic Gov. Jon S. Corzine has said he'll sign the bill.

Death penalty foes are hoping New Jersey will inspire others to follow suit.

"I hope New Jersey will give encouragement to 
other legislators and public officials to have 
the courage to face this issue squarely," said 
Joshua Rubenstein, Amnesty International USA's northeast director.

Diann Rust-Tierney, executive director of the 
National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, 
said New Jersey reflects a growing national trend 
against the death penalty, with executions in 
decline and more states weighing abolition.

"We have learned a lot about the death penalty in 
the past 30 years," Rust-Tierney said. "When you 
look closely at the facts, it just doesn't add up to sound policy."

She noted New Jersey's votes come a week after 
Michael L. McCormick of Tennessee was acquitted 
in a retrial after spending 15 years on death row.

The nation has executed 1,099 people since the 
U.S. Supreme Court reauthorized the death penalty 
in 1976. In 1999, 98 people were executed, the 
most since 1976; last year 53 people were executed, the lowest since 1996.

"The United States is one of the few countries in 
the world that has a death penalty, keeping 
company with the likes of Iraq, Iran, North 
Korea, Libya and Afghanistan," said New Jersey Sen. Raymond Lesniak, D-Union.

Other states have considered abolishing the death 
penalty, but none have advanced as far as New 
Jersey. According to the Washington, D.C.-based 
Death Penalty Information Center, 37 states have the death penalty.

"Some people deserve to die and we have an 
obligation to execute them," said New York Law 
School professor Robert Blecker, a national death 
penalty supporter who has been lobbying New Jersey lawmakers against abolition.

But death penalty foes point to recent success:

• The Massachusetts House in November rejected reinstating the death penalty.

• A 2004 appeals court decision found New York's 
death penalty law unconstitutional.

• The American Bar Association recently said 
problems in state death penalty procedures 
justify a nationwide execution freeze.

• Tennessee lawmakers are analyzing that state's death penalty.

• Then-Gov. George Ryan of Illinois declared a 
moratorium on executions in 2000 after 13 people 
who were found to have been wrongfully convicted were released.

• Courts have banned executing the mentally 
retarded and people younger than 18 when they committed their crime.

The nation's last execution was in Sept. 25 in 
Texas. Since then, executions have been delayed 
pending a U.S. Supreme Court decision on whether 
execution through lethal injection violates the 
constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

"There is no question that the death penalty is 
under far greater scrutiny," Rubenstein said.

Bills to abolish the death penalty were recently 
approved by a Colorado House committee, the 
Montana Senate and the New Mexico House.

But none of those bills have advanced.

Meanwhile, Nebraska and Maryland lawmakers 
retained the death penalty in recent votes, and 
states such as Georgia, Missouri, Texas, Utah and 
Virginia are considering expanding their death 
penalties, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

New Jersey Sen. Joseph Kyrillos said there's good reason for that.

"Ending the death penalty in New Jersey sends a 
dangerous message of weakness to those who commit 
the most heinous murders and those who would 
commit indiscriminate mass murder," he said. "The 
perilous times we live in call for strength, not fecklessness."

Kyrillos, R-Monmouth, recalled how five men were 
arrested earlier this year for allegedly plotting 
to attack New Jersey's Fort Dix.

"The threat of terrorism is all too real and our 
response must be robust and unwavering," Kyrillos said.

************

Arizona, other states contemplate life after the death penalty
By DAVID CRARY, AP National Writer December 11, 2007

NEW YORK - More than at any time over the past 30 
years, the future of capital punishment is in limbo.
The Supreme Court will hear arguments next term 
in a momentous lethal injection case. While it's 
widely expected that executions will resume in 
some form following that case, the moment gives 
Americans a chance to contemplate what would change if they stopped for good.

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Start with some modest consequences.

Florida citizens would no longer have the chance 
to earn $150 by serving as executioner. Texas, by 
far the death-penalty leader, would save the 
$86.06 cost of drugs used in each lethal injection.

And Arizona's Corrections Department would have 
no further updates on its special Web site that 
features photographs, profiles and last-meal 
requests of its executed inmates. (The most 
recent menu: Robert Comer's order of fried okra, 
buns and banana bread before his death in May).

There would be weightier consequences as well.

-- States with many death-penalty cases would 
save millions of dollars now spent on legal costs 
in long-running appeals. Additional savings would 
result in some states which now spend far more 
per inmate for Death Row facilities than other maximum-security inmates.

-- Abroad, notably in Europe and Canada, 
America's image would improve in countries that 
abolished capital punishment decades ago and now 
wonder why America remains one of only a handful 
of prosperous democracies that continue with executions.

-- Among the American public, reaction would be 
deeply divided. Death penalty supporters would 
decry the loss of what they consider a valuable 
crime deterrent as well as the ultimate form of 
justice for victims and their families. Foes of 
execution would welcome the end of what they have 
deemed a barbaric national tradition.

"Texas would be a better place," said David 
Atwood, founder of the Texas Coalition to Abolish 
the Death Penalty. "I know people who've traveled 
abroad, and when they say where they're from, the 
response is, 'Oh, that's the state that executes all those people."'

By contrast, Rusty Hubbarth, vice president of 
the pro-death penalty Texas group Justice for 
All, sees the consequences of abolition as all 
bad. His prediction: "More murders."

Texas was the venue for the nation's most recent 
execution. Murderer Michael Richard died by 
lethal injection there on Sept. 25. Since then, 
executions in Texas and other states have been 
put on hold pending a Supreme Court decision - 
expected no sooner than June - on whether the 
standard lethal injection procedure can cause 
pain severe enough to violate the constitutional 
ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Advocates on both sides of the debate say it's 
likely the high court will offer some pathway for 
states to resume executions. But the lull 
coincides with other developments reflecting an 
unprecedented level of doubt about capital punishment.

Even before the Supreme Court intervention, 
several states had suspended executions and the 
American Bar Association urged a nationwide 
freeze. New Jersey's Legislature is voting this 
week on whether to abolish capital punishment; by 
doing so it would join 12 other states with no death penalty law.

This isn't the first hiatus for executions. The 
Supreme Court declared capital punishment 
unconstitutional in 1972, but four years later 
cleared the way for executions to resume.

There have been 1,099 executions nationwide since 
then, with a peak of 98 in 1999. The numbers have 
ebbed in recent years - there have been 42 this 
year - while more than 3,300 inmates populate 
Death Row units across the country.

For those inmates, the psychological impact of 
abolition presumably would be greater in Texas - 
where executions have been frequent - than in a 
state such as Pennsylvania, which has executed only three people since 1978.

For other Americans, the impact would be varied - and argued over.

The biggest savings, by far, would come from 
reduced legal costs. Because of drawn-out 
appeals, a typical death penalty case can cost 
from $1 million to $3 million, well above the 
typical cost of a lengthy life imprisonment. On 
average, it costs roughly $25,000 to house an 
inmate for a year, though maximum-security confinement can be more expensive.

A government-appointed commission in New Jersey 
said abolition of the death penalty would save 
the public defender's office $1.46 million per 
year in legal costs and enable Death Row inmates 
to be confined elsewhere at roughly half the 
current cost. The Ohio public defender's office 
has 20 attorneys in its death penalty division, 
with a budget for 2008-09 totaling $4.6 million.

Studies in other states have suggested potential 
savings of many millions of dollars annually if 
the death penalty were replaced by life 
sentences. A Duke University study, for example, 
concluded that the death penalty costs North 
Carolina $2.16 million more per execution than a 
non-death penalty murder case with a sentence of life imprisonment.

California is a case unto itself, with 666 
inmates on Death Row - far more than any other 
state. The average wait for execution is 17 
years, and since 1978 there have been more 
suicides on Death Row (14) than executions (13). 
If executions ceased, the state could abandon 
proposals to build a new Death Row for more than 
$300 million to replace antiquated facilities at 
San Quentin, which opened in 1852.

Texas also has a big Death Row - 371 inmates. 
Because the state has conducted two-dozen or 
three-dozen executions annually in recent years, 
it arguably would have to spend more on long-term 
confinement if the death penalty were abolished - 
but those extra costs would likely be outweighed 
by less spending on legal fees.

Death penalty opponents say the savings 
nationwide could shift to programs that would 
curb violent crime - more police on streets, more 
drug rehabilitation and mental health services to 
address problems that affect many criminals, 
better child-protection services to curtail the 
abuse that many killers experienced in their youth.

"Most Americans are under illusion that the death 
penalty is less costly than keeping someone in 
prison for life," said Sue Gunawardena-Vaughn, 
director of Amnesty International's campaign 
against the death penalty. "But it's not a good 
use of resources. The money saved could be used for better criminal justice."

Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the pro-death 
penalty Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, 
acknowledged that capital punishment cases 
generally do cost more than other cases because 
of the lengthy legal reviews. It's worth it for the sake of justice, he said.

"Whatever we need to spend on a death penalty 
case, there's no moral justification for spending less," he said.

One of the most bitterly disputed aspects of the 
death penalty is whether it deters violent crime.

Opponents insist it does not, noting that most 
states without the death penalty - as well as 
many U.S. allies abroad - have lower crime rates 
than the states which conduct the most 
executions. Opponents also cite the recent 
exonerations of scores of Death Row inmates, 
based on DNA tests, and say abolition is the only 
sure way to avoid executing innocent people.

Death penalty supporters have their own favored 
statistics, including several recent studies by 
economists suggesting that each execution prevents multiple murders.

"If those findings are right, capital punishment 
has a strong claim to being not merely morally 
permissible, but morally obligatory - above all 
from the standpoint of those who wish to protect 
life," wrote law professors Cass Sunstein of the 
University of Chicago and Adrian Vermeule of 
Harvard in the Stanford Law Review last year.

Even harder to measure than deterrence is the 
impact of executions on relatives and close 
friends of murder victims. Some relatives 
campaign against the death penalty; others, like 
John Rizzotti of Los Angeles, support capital 
punishment and believe abolition would create an unjust void.

Rizzotti, whose 78-year-old great-grandmother, 
Leah Schendel, was sexually assaulted and fatally 
beaten in 1980, said he and other family members 
found some relief in the execution of her killer, Manuel Babbitt, in 1999.

The long legal process between conviction and 
execution was frustrating, Rizzotti said, but he 
believes families of other murder victims 
nonetheless have a right to see such killers put to death.

"What he did and how he did it was so 
unbelievably gruesome that there was no reason 
for him to have a life," said Rizzotti, who 
witnessed Babbitt's lethal injection. "It was 
very cathartic, very calm and peaceful for us. 
... After all that time, he finally got what he deserved."

However, skeptics of capital punishment note that 
death sentences are issued in less than 1 percent 
of all homicides, and suggest that victims' 
relatives in places without the death penalty come to terms with its absence.

"The very availability of the death penalty makes 
it something that victims have to want," said 
Steven Shatz, who teaches at the University of 
San Francisco Law School. "If you love the person 
who died, and the defendant is treated less 
harshly than another defendant, it means society 
values your loved one less. But if it weren't available, you wouldn't miss it."

Abolition of the death penalty would improve 
America's image in the majority of nations that 
already have forsaken it. In some cases, 
countries without capital punishment have balked 
at extraditing people to America who might face execution.

The issue has provoked passionate protests in 
Europe. The Council of Europe, whose 47 member 
nations have either abolished or declared 
moratoriums on the death penalty, is on record as 
supporting worldwide abolition and has leveled 
stinging criticism at the United States.

"Europeans are increasingly asking whether they 
share core values with the United States," said 
Reed Brody of Human Rights Watch.

The Council of Europe's secretary general, Terry 
Davis, has taken note of the Supreme Court's 
decision to review lethal injection and expressed 
hope that the procedure would be banned.

"It should help the United States of America to 
catch up with the majority of civilized and 
democratic countries in the world," he said.

According to Amnesty International, the United 
States was the only Western Hemisphere nation to 
conduct executions in 2006, and its 53 executions 
were exceeded only by five countries lacking 
strong credentials as democracies - China, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq and Sudan.

"We definitely have image problems with this 
issue," said Deborah Denno, a Fordham University 
law professor. "People here think it makes us 
look tough. I think it makes us look cowardly."