Governor supports death penalty moratorium
By Erick Rommel
Head Staff Writer
Acting Gov. Richard J. Codey supports adding a moratorium provision to a bill that proposes the creation of a study commission to determine whether the state death penalty system is fair and worth its cost.
Using his powers as Senate president, he stalled a vote on a bill that would have created the 13-person commission until a moratorium provision is added.
Codey’s decision came as the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal by convicted murderer John Martini. The 74-year-old has been on death row since 1991 for kidnapping and murdering a Fair Lawn businessman.
Martini still has an appeal pending in state court.
In conjunction with this increased public attention regarding the death penalty in New Jersey, the state’s Catholic bishops reaffirmed their opposition in a statement. “We acknowledge that the subject of capital punishment is controversial and emotional,” they said. “We affirm that the state has the duty to punish criminals and to prevent the repetition or occurrence of crime . . .We believe that our society is sufficiently developed to protect itself and to redress the injustice caused by the criminal without resorting to the use of the death penalty. One alternative is life without possibility of parole.”
It’s been 41 years since the last execution in New Jersey. No current death row inmates can be put to death until the state Department of Corrections establishes new rules and regulations for lethal injections. The previous regulations were struck down by a state appeals court last February. The court ruled the regulations were too secretive and said there were no provisions to halt an execution, even in the case of a last-minute reprieve.
New regulations have been proposed. A public hearing to discuss the proposed rules will be scheduled in February.
“The Catechism of the Catholic Church acknowledges the right of public authorities to impose criminal punishment proportionate to the gravity of the offense, ‘if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor,’” said the bishops in their statement. “Because the State of New Jersey has other means to redress the injustice caused by crime and to effectively prevent crime by rendering the one who has committed the offense incapable of doing harm and because we recognize the dignity of all human life, we continue to consistently and vigorously oppose the use of capital punishment.”
*The attached/referenced article was originally published in The Catholic Spirit, the official newspaper of the Diocese of Metuchen, and is protected under U.S. and international copyright law