I wanted to expand upon a post I wrote last week on legislation introduced by Assemblyman Bill Baroni (R-Hamilton) that focused on the death penalty. (My post is the only place I’ve seen this.)
Here’s the post:
The bill, a constitutional amendment that would strip the Legislature of its authority to repeal the death penalty.
We’ll be asking him about this as the campaign wears on, but it appears that the Assemblyman — and candidate for state Senate — is on the wrong side of the death penalty debate.
I talked about the bill today with Mr. Baroni, who offered a more nuanced explanation. The bill is not a “backdoor attempt to enshrine the death penalty in the constitution” (my characterization), but is designed to ensure public debate.
“The death penalty is too important of an issue to go forweard with the status quo, or to make a radical change without a serious public policy debate.”
Mr. Baroni, who voted for the state’s death penalty moratorium and to create the commission to study capital punishment, said he is troubled by the two extremes of the debate. He accepts much of the report issued by the commission, but believes doing away with the death penalty completely is the wrong approach.
“My view is that to keep it just as it is in New Jersey is not working, helping the families of victims, but at other extreme I believe there are certain crimes that do warrant the death penalty — terrorism, killing a police officer, killing a child — government needs to have it available.”
He believes that the racial differences in sentencing have to be addressed and wants more conclusive evidence required before the death penalty can be imposed.
“If you don’t have DNA evidence, there shouldn’t be a death sentence.”
He calls the legislation — there is a companion bill introduced in the state Senate by Peter Inverso (R-Hamilton) — a “brake” that can be applied to “slow down” the discussion. It is, he said, “a mechanism for a public referendum.”
“I think public has to have some involvement in this process.
He admits it’s not likely that the legislation will even get to committee — he’s hopeful, but not particularly optimistic.
“My goal would be that it would trigger hearings that would lead to new sentencing laws.”
Essentially, and Mr. Baroni admits this, he is hoping to find some middle ground on the issue, preserving the death penalty for the most extreme of cases and only those that he thinks are irrefutable. I’m not sure this is possible, however. I still believe that granting the state the power to take a life implicates us all — as the French philosopher and author Albert Camus said 50 years ago (I’ve quoted him a number of times on this), capital punishment is “the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal’s deed, however calculated can be compared.”
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Hank Kalet 