N.J. death penalty on way out

The New Jersey Legislature will move to abolish the death penalty after a report released yesterday found that capital punishment is costly to taxpayers and serves no "legitimate . . . intent."

The state has not executed anyone since 1963, and has only nine men on death row. Marko Bey, the longest-serving inmate, has been there since 1983.

A 13-member commission, established last year to study the issue, recommended in its report that the death penalty be replaced with life in prison without parole.

"There is increasing evidence that the death penalty is inconsistent with evolving standards of decency," the commission wrote. "Executing a small number of persons guilty of murder is not sufficiently compelling to justify the risk of making an irreversible mistake."

Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts (D., Camden) said he supports abolishing the death penalty, but he didn't think the Assembly would take up the issue for a few months, until it resolves the sticky property-tax reform issue.

"Effectively, we've had a death penalty moratorium for over 40 years," he said. "A lot of us have been waiting for the commission report before we went into high gear."

A bill to abolish the death penalty has been introduced with 11 cosponsors in the Assembly, Roberts said.

"We have to build consensus," he said. "I'm sure we'll be able to do that."

A bill to get rid of the death penalty also is being written in the Senate, and Senate President Richard J. Codey (D., Essex) said he expects lawmakers to take up the issue by July. He too noted that New Jersey's death penalty law is, practically, dormant. "The way it's going, you'd have to be older than God himself to be put to death," Codey said.

In a statement, Gov. Corzine said he has long opposed the death penalty, and he looked "forward to working with the Legislature to implement the recommendations outlined in this report."

Death penalty opponents believe lawmakers will move quickly.

"It's time for the Legislature to act. It's past time for the death penalty to go," said Celeste Fitzgerald, with New Jerseyans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. "It's a distraction from justice."

Republicans and death-penalty proponents blasted back at the report and at the Democrat-led Legislature, which recently passed bills to provide clean needles to drug addicts and civil unions for same-sex couples.

"The Trenton Democrats now propose to eliminate capital punishment for cop killers, terrorists and sexual predators who murder children," said Sen. Nicholas Asselta (R., Cumberland). "The Democrats' radical agenda is out-of-touch with the values of millions of New Jerseyans."

The commission said the death penalty does not deter crime and does not help murder victims' families, who are forced to endure a long appeals process. The commission also said the death penalty costs more money than a life sentence.

Housing each inmate on death row costs the state $72,602 a year, compared with $40,121 for general population prisoners, the report said, citing state Department of Corrections calculations.

Eliminating the death penalty would save the state as much as $1.3 million per inmate over a lifetime, based on those corrections department numbers, the report said. The panel also said the Office of the Public Defender would save roughly $1.46 million if execution was outlawed.

The commission proposed that any money saved from abolishing the death penalty be used to aid the families of victims.

If the death penalty is abolished, New Jersey would become the 13th state without capital punishment and the first state to end the practice by passing a law. New Jersey was just the third state to impose a moratorium on the death penalty to study the issue.

The moratorium has held up the most notorious death penalty case in South Jersey. Leslie Nelson, a transsexual who gunned down two Camden County law enforcement officers in 1995, has had her death sentence overturned twice, the last time in 2002.

Nelson was to have a retrial on the penalty phase, but the judge delayed the proceedings last year after the moratorium was put in place. Camden County prosecutors said yesterday that they would continue to seek the death penalty against Nelson unless the law is abolished.

The only two other South Jersey death row inmates are Brian Wakefield, who was convicted in 2004 of killing an elderly Atlantic County couple, and Sean Padraic Kenney, who was convicted in 1996 of killing a gas station attendant in Deptford, Gloucester County.

Former State Sen. John Russo, a commission member who wrote the 1982 death penalty law still in effect, said the law might need to be abolished, considering the way it has been handled.

"But I believe that the fundamental problem is not the statute, but rather liberal judges and other individuals who have consistently disregarded the legislative will and refused to enforce the law as written," he wrote in a dissent to the commission report.

The commission included several lawyers and prosecutors, a police chief, a former state Supreme Court justice and people on both sides of the debate.

Some of the victims' families also said they did not want the death penalty abolished, including Gunnar Marsh, who son was killed by death row inmate Donald Loftin in 1992.

"It's all just one big sad story," he said. "They say closure and that kind of nonsense. That never really happens, but I think we'd be a little bit closer to closure if this guy had been executed."

The nine inmates on New Jersey's death row, including the county in which they were convicted, their crime, the date they arrived on death row and, in some cases, the date they returned to death row after resentencing:

Marko Bey, Monmouth, Dec. 16, 1983, returned Sept. 13, 1990. Convicted of the murders of Cheryl Alston and Carol D. Peniston in April 1983. Death sentences were reversed on appeal, but he was resentenced to death in the Peniston case and that sentence was upheld by the state Supreme Court.

John Martini, Bergen, Dec. 13, 1990. Convicted of murdering Fair Lawn businessman Irving Flax on Jan. 23, 1989; he also has admitted to two murders in Arizona and faces a murder trial in Pennsylvania.

Donald Loftin, Mercer, Dec. 6, 1994. Convicted of the May 5, 1992 slaying of Gary Marsh of Trenton, an attendant at a Lawrence gas station.

Nathaniel Harvey, Middlesex, Oct. 17, 1986, returned Dec. 16, 1994. Convicted of the 1985 bludgeoning murder of Irene Schnaps in Plainsboro. He won a new trial; was convicted and sentenced again in 1994.

David Cooper, Monmouth, May 17, 1995. Convicted of kidnapping 6-year-old Latasha Goodman in Asbury Park, raping and strangling her July 18, 1993.

Ambrose Harris, Mercer, March 1, 1996. Convicted of murdering 22-year-old Kristin Huggins, an artist from Lower Makefield, Pa., on Dec. 17, 1992.

Sean Padraic Kenney, Gloucester, formerly known as Richard Feaster, March 27, 1996. He was convicted of the October 1993 shotgun slaying of Keith Donaghy, a Gloucester County gas station attendant.

Jesse Timmendequas, Mercer, May 14, 1997. Convicted of the murder of 7-year-old Megan Kanka of Hamilton, July 1994. The crime led to passage of Megan's Law, requiring certain released sex offenders to register with police.

Brian P. Wakefield, Atlantic, sentenced March 4. He pleaded guilty to the Jan. 18, 2001 slayings of Richard Hazard, 70, and Shirley Hazard, 65, in Pleasantville.

To read the commission's full report, go to http://go.philly.com/deathpenalty EndText

SOURCE: New Jersey Department of Corrections

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