N.J. Governor Signs Death Penalty Ban Into Law

TRENTON, N.J. — Governor Corzine signed into law yesterday a measure abolishing the death penalty, making New Jersey the first state in more than four decades to reject capital punishment.

The law, approved last week by the state Assembly and Senate, replaces the death sentence with a new sentence of life in prison without parole.

"This is a day of progress for us and for the millions of people across our nation and around the globe who reject the death penalty as a moral or practical response to the grievous, even heinous, crime of murder," Mr. Corzine said.

The measure spares eight men on the state's death row. On Sunday, Mr. Corzine signed orders commuting the sentences of those eight to life in prison without parole. Among the eight spared is Jesse Timmendequas, a sex offender who murdered 7-year-old Megan Kanka in 1994. The case inspired Megan's Law, which requires law enforcement agencies to notify the public about convicted sex offenders living in their communities. New Jersey reinstated the death penalty in 1982 — six years after the U.S. Supreme Court allowed states to resume executions — but it hasn't executed anyone since 1963.

The state's move is being hailed across the world as a historic victory against capital punishment. Rome plans to shine golden light on the Colosseum in support. Once the arena for deadly gladiator combat and executions, the Colosseum is now a symbol of the fight against the death penalty.

"The rest of America, and for that matter the entire world, is watching what we are doing here today," Assemblyman Wilfredo Caraballo, a Democrat, said.

The bill passed the Legislature largely along party lines, with controlling Democrats supporting the abolition and minority Republicans opposed. Republicans sought to retain the death penalty for those who murder law enforcement officials, rape and murder children, and terrorists, but Democrats rejected that.

New Jersey's Public Defender's Office, which represents all eight men, questioned whether Mr. Corzine had authority to commute death sentences to life in prison without parole.

"We have to discuss the implications of commuting a sentence to a sentence that did not exist at the time they were sentenced," a spokesman for Public Defender Yvonne Smith Segars, Tom Rosenthal, said. But Mr. Rosenthal said none of the eight men are likely to get paroled should their former sentences stand. David Cooper, 37, would be the youngest before he was eligible for parole at age 78, assuming he was released at his first parole hearing.

The other men would be eligible for parole between the ages of 88 and 152. "The reality of it is they are not even parole eligible for decades," Mr. Rosenthal said.

The last states to eliminate the death penalty were Iowa and West Virginia in 1965, according to the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

The nation has executed 1,099 people since the U.S. Supreme Court reauthorized the death penalty in 1976. In 1999, 98 people were executed, the most since 1976; last year 53 people were executed, the lowest since 1996.

The nation's last execution was September 25 in Texas. Since then, executions have been delayed pending a U.S. Supreme Court decision on whether execution through lethal injection violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

"The word will travel around the globe that there is a state in the United States of America that was the first to show that life is stronger than death, that love is greater than hatred, and compassion and standing for the dignity of the human person is stronger than the need for revenge," the Roman Catholic nun who wrote "Dead Man Walking," Sister Helen Prejean, said.