To the editor
By:
This is an open letter to Gov. Jim McGreevey:
Dear Gov. McGreevey:
I am greatly saddened and angered by your Jan. 12 decision to veto A-1913, the New Jersey Assembly’s bill to create a Death Penalty Study Commission, which passed 70-8 (a companion bill in the Senate passed unanimously). A study was supported by a majority of New Jersey’s citizens.
Our state could and should have been a leader, a model for other states in reviewing the death penalty.
Instead you have chosen, unreasonably and unaccountably, to leave us in the company of the willfully ignorant, who continue to do what they have always done whether or not it is just or effective; you have chosen to ignore the will of the people and the serious, well-founded questions which the Study Commission would have addressed.
These include the possibility of executing an innocent person; the arbitrary and discriminatory nature of New Jersey’s capital punishment system; concerns over whether the threat of the death penalty actually deters murder; and society’s evolving standards of appropriate punishment.
Can you possibly explain to us why you have killed a chance for our state to thoughtfully examine these life-and-death matters?
Zion Road