Follow New Jersey, repeal death penalty

Thats the title of an op-ed in Houston Chronicle by NCADP's Diann Rust-Tierney and TCADP's Rick Halperin.

What do law enforcement officers, prosecutors, crime victims' advocates and both Democratic and Republican state legislators have in common?

Recently, all of these groups came together in New Jersey to support legislation to repeal that state's death penalty. The legislation was signed into law last week by Gov. Jon Corzine, and New Jersey became the first state to legislatively repeal the death penalty since Iowa and West Virginia did so way back in 1965.

The fact that New Jersey acted as it did may surprise anyone not familiar with the growing national discussion over capital punishment. But for those who are familiar with this discussion, the surprise is not that New Jersey acted as it did — but rather why other states such as Texas have not taken similar steps toward repeal.

The overwhelming and bipartisan vote to repeal New Jersey's death penalty did not happen overnight — far from it. And it will not happen overnight in Texas.

In the end, it came after study, discussion and deliberation — and after hundreds and hundreds of hours of testimony from police, prosecutors, murder victims' family members and others.

In New Jersey, a special commission was appointed to thoroughly study the pros and cons of the death penalty — and to recommend what measures could be taken to fix the state's death penalty statutes. The commission was made up of victims' rights advocates, county prosecutors and other members of law enforcement, a retired New Jersey Supreme Court justice and many others.

The study found that there was no "fix" for the death penalty. It found that it is a deeply flawed public policy and, in the words of one state senator who in 1982 voted to reinstate the death penalty in New Jersey, it is a "false and ineffective choice for taxpayers and residents who have lost loved ones. It has for too long been sustained by mythology and fiction, propped up by outdated rhetoric when courage and common sense would have served us better."

The commission further found that the death penalty squanders millions in tax dollars, does not serve a legitimate purpose such as crime deterrence, delays healing for the loved ones of murder victims and, despite many safeguards, carries no guarantee against what would be our worst nightmare — the execution of an innocent person.

New Jersey is hardly the first state to begin to rethink the nation's experiment with capital punishment. Illinois and Maryland have had moratoriums. California, North Carolina and Tennessee have had study commissions. All the while, death sentences are down sharply and executions have decreased since reaching a crescendo in the late 1990s.

In 2007, the state of Texas carried out 26 executions, accounting for 62 percent of the executions that took place in the United States this year. The executions in Texas occurred at a time when nearly a dozen other states had instituted a moratorium or were considering issues related to the administration of lethal injection. From Jan. 10 to April 23, Texas was the only executing state in the country. Texas now has executed a total of 405 people since 1982 (of 1,099 executions nationwide since1977).

According to data available from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and the Office of Court Administration, 15 men were sentenced to death in Texas in 2007 (as of Dec. 14). Over the past five years, the number of new death sentences in Texas has declined by approximately 50 percent, which mirrors national trends.

In Texas and across the nation, the death penalty is under increased scrutiny and the result is that the public is beginning to arrive at an inevitable conclusion: Capital punishment is a fundamentally flawed public policy that is collapsing under the weight of its many blunders, biases and bureaucracies.

Blunders? 125 people have been freed from death row after evidence of their innocence emerged.

Biases? Try as we might, we have yet to find a way to fairly decide who gets death and who doesn't and at the end of the day who is actually executed.

Bureaucracies? In New Jersey, $253 million has been spent on capital punishment, 60 people have been sentenced to death, 52 death sentences have been reversed and not one person has been executed.

Across the nation, many of the 3,300 people on death rows have sat there for decades.

In New Jersey, regardless of their initial views on capital punishment, a panel of experts and a bipartisan group of lawmakers determined that the system is beyond repair. When will Texas reach the same inevitable conclusion?

Rust-Tierney is the executive director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. Halperin is the president of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty and a professor of Human Rights at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.