Death penalty law in need of serious study

PACKET EDITORIAL, Dec. 10

By: Packet Editorial
   If acting Gov. Richard Codey is intent on making his mark in Trenton as the un-McGreevey, he is off to a flying start.
   First he pledged to be a voice for the voiceless — rather than the handmaiden of the politically powerful. Then he committed himself to the pursuit of comprehensive ethics reform — rather than paying lip service to half-hearted, piecemeal, symbolic gestures.
   And now he’s calling for a moratorium on the death penalty — rather than perpetuate New Jersey’s adherence to a capital-punishment statute that holds the dubious distinction of being both completely toothless and outrageously expensive at the same time.
   Earlier this year, the Legislature gave overwhelming approval to a bill that would have created a commission to study the state’s death-penalty law. Then-Gov. James E. McGrevey vetoed it, claiming the issue had been "continuously studied in painstaking detail." When a similar bill was ready for introduction this week, acting Gov. Codey asked the sponsor — Sen. Shirley Turner, who represents the 15th Legislative District, including the Princetons — to delay the measure until a provision could be added placing a moratorium on executions while the commission carries out its study.
   Sen. Turner readily agreed. "The acting governor wants to go for the gold and have an outright moratorium on the death penalty," she declared. "I’m with him all the way on that one." A spokeswoman for the acting governor said the moratorium he has in mind would likely run from 18 months to two years.
   This strikes us as eminently sensible. Whether one favors or opposes the death penalty — and we should make clear we oppose it — New Jersey’s approach to capital punishment is, in a word, absurd. There is a law on the books, passed in 1982, that authorizes the state to impose the death penalty. And there is a body of case law, developed over the intervening 22 years, that makes the process for carrying out this punishment so utterly Byzantine that nobody has even come close to being executed. Meanwhile, millions upon millions of tax dollars have been spent on endless appeals, filling court dockets and lawyers’ pockets, for no discernible public purpose. The law is obviously not a deterrent, nor does it exact retribution. If ever a law, both in its intent and in its implementation, was in need of study, this is it.
   Former Gov. McGreevey’s refusal to endorse such a study was puzzling. The only "painstaking detail" to which the current death-penalty law has ever been subjected took place when then-Gov. Christie Whitman, a death-penalty proponent, appointed former U.S. Rep. Dick Zimmer, an outspoken death-penalty advocate, to come up with recommendations for streamlining the legal process and speeding up executions. That even this high-profile, one-sided study failed to achieve its stated objective makes clear how completely broken the current system is, and how desperately this matter requires serious, concerted, objective and comprehensive study.
   And while this study is taking place, New Jersey should stop pretending there is any meaning or merit, let alone usefulness, to the current death-penalty scheme. As soon as Sen. Turner’s bill is amended to include acting Gov. Codey’s recommended moratorium, the Legislature should pass it, the acting governor should sign it and the study commission should get to work — determining whether capital punishment is, in the words of Sen. Turner’s bill, consistent with "evolving standards of decency." After spending the past 22 years going nowhere on a death-penalty treadmill, New Jersey can surely afford to take a breather for the next 18 to 24 months — while charting a more productive path toward what we hope will be a more practical, more humane and far less costly destination.