The state Senate is scheduled to consider a bill on Thursday that would abolish the death penalty in New Jersey. According toa story in The Philadelphia Inquirer:
The proposed legislation, scheduled to go before the committee on Thursday, would repeal the death penalty and replace it with life imprisonment with no eligibility for parole. Current death-row inmates would be resentenced to life imprisonment without parole in a maximum security prison.
It seems a sensible approach and should address some of the legitimate concerns raised by Assemblyman Bill Baroni (a Republican who represents South Brunswick, Cranbury, Jamesburg and Monroe). Mr. Baroni told me last month that poorly constructed legislation could open the door for death-row inamtes to appeal and potentially overturn their sentences because there would be no mechanism to commute them.
In case anyone is interested, here are my five reasons to oppose the death penalty:
1. Murder is murder no matter who pulls the trigger or sticks in the needle. When the state murders in a democracy, it does so with our implied consent making us complicit in the act. The death penalty, therefore, makes all of us murderers.
2. Premeditiated murder, according to Camus, is especially heinous; capital punishment is really just state-sanctioned, premeditated murder and vigilantism.
3. Death is permanent. There is no system that can be put in place that can safeguard against human error or bias, meaning that there always will remain a chance that the innocent will be put to death.
4. There is no system that can be put in place that can safeguard against human error or bias, meaning that there always will remain a chance that issues of race, class and gender will influence who gets sent to death and who faces life in prison.
5. It not about deterence, but about retaliation and retribution. — something that should be out of character for a civilized, democratic society. Just listen to supporters who consistently stoke fear and speak of it as “the ultimate punishment”; no one talks about the death penalty as a way to prevent crime and, if they did, there have been far too many studies offering evidence to the contrary.
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Hank Kalet 