Death Penalty Opponents Hail Codey's Call For Moratorium On Executions

CONTACT: Celeste Fitzgerald 973-635-6396 or 609-278-6719

DEATH PENALTY OPPONENTS HAIL CODEY'S CALL FOR MORATORIUM ON EXECUTIONS

Trenton -- New Jerseyans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (NJADP), a statewide organization of more than 10,000 members, today (Tues. Dec. 7) announced support for a death penalty moratorium, proposed yesterday by Acting Governor Richard Codey. Governor Codey also endorsed a comprehensive study of the state's capital punishment system, which NJADP has long advocated.

"No execution should be carried out, when overwhelming evidence suggests that New Jersey's death penalty system is badly broken," said NJADP Director Celeste Fitzgerald. "A thorough review of the capital punishment system is clearly needed. We are grateful to the Governor for his leadership on this serious issue."

Earlier Monday, the United States Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal of 74-year-old John Martini, the New Jersey death row inmate closest to death by lethal injection.

"Both the Legislature and the Judiciary - and now the Acting Governor - have called New Jersey's death penalty into question," Fitzgerald said. "Its only common sense that executions be stopped while this intensive review goes on."

Last February, the Superior Court of New Jersey Appellate Division, by unanimous decision, halted executions here, calling the state's regulations for lethal injection killings 'arbitrary and unreasonable'. That moratorium remains in effect.

Fitzgerald noted that the 2003 Legislature overwhelmingly passed a bipartisan bill calling for a death penalty study, which was later vetoed by then-Governor James E. McGreevey on the last day of the legislative term.

Since New Jersey reinstated the death penalty in 1982, nearly 70 percent of all the state's capital sentences have been overturned for serious error and, according to the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington DC, since 1977, 117 Americans sentenced to death were later discovered to be innocent and freed from death rows - roughly one for every eight executed.

According to a May 2002 Rutgers-Eagleton poll, sixty-six percent of New Jerseyans, including the majority of those who say they support the death penalty, support a moratorium and study.

NJADP, which has campaigned since 1999 for an end to the death penalty, is core group of more than 200 New Jersey organizations comprising 120,000 members. For information, visit www.njadp.org or call 609-278-6719.

###