Jan. 9 NEW JERSEY: Lawmakers approve measure to suspend executions in New Jersey In Trenton, New Jersey lawmakers voted Monday to suspend executions while a task force studies the fairness and costs of imposing the death penalty. The measure now heads to Gov. Richard J. Codey for his signature. Codey has indicated he will sign it before leaving office on Jan. 17. A 13-member study commission will have until November to report on whether the death penalty is fairly imposed and whether alternatives would ensure public safety and address the needs of victims' families. There are 10 prisoners on New Jersey's death row. While capital punishment was reinstated in the state in 1982, the last execution here took place in 1963. The Assembly passed the measure Monday, 55-21, with 2 abstentions. The Senate approved it 30-6 last month. "By its action today, the Assembly joins the Senate in signaling deep concern that the state's death penalty system isn't working," said Celeste Fitzgerald, director of New Jerseyans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. She said capital punishment is meted out unfairly, wastes money and risks executing the innocent. Not everyone was pleased with the vote. "As a victim survivor of both of my parents, Richard and Shirley Hazard, who suffered cruel and unusual murders in their own home by thug punk Brian P. Wakefield, who is currently on death row, my personal feelings are that Wakefield murdered my parents and the state is slowly murdering me and my siblings," said Sharon Hazard Johnson, who urged lawmakers to oppose the measure. "But I am not saying get rid of the death penalty because it is not working. I am saying use it when it fits the crime." New Jersey would become the third state behind Illinois and Maryland to suspend executions, but the first to do so through legislation. The others were done by executive order. Maryland has since lifted its suspension. Jean Amore, a missionary sister at Immaculate Conception in Paterson, hailed the vote, saying, "History is being made today." "It's important because no man's life will be taken during this time," said Amore, who has ministered inmates on Texas' death row. The bill had bipartisan legislative support. Assembly leader Joseph Roberts, a liberal Camden County Democrat who is set to become Assembly speaker on Tuesday, said the legislation is long overdue. "This is an issue we should have confronted a long time ago. The injustice of the current system and the steep price tag of it as well means we ought to take a look at it," said Roberts. "In New Jersey, there has been a sea change in how people view the death penalty," said Sen. Diane Allen, R-Burlington, who voted for the moratorium in the Senate. "We've heard about people who have been put to death and were then found to be innocent. We've looked at the cost, which is enormously more for someone on death row than for a person who's imprisoned for life without parole." A similar bill empowering a panel to study the death penalty but not stopping executions was vetoed two years ago by then-Gov. James E. McGreevey, who said the panel was unlikely to provide new information. New Jersey lawmakers are not alone in considering a study of executions. Concerned about wrongful convictions and whether the poor and minorities are more likely to receive the death penalty, at least 12 other states have appointed study commissions. 38 states allow people to be sentenced to death. (source: Associated Press) ********************* NATIONAL COALITION TO ABOLISH THE DEATH PENALTY -- PRESS RELEASE CONTACT: David Elliot, NCADP Communications Director 202-331-4090, ext. 16 cell phone: 202-607-7036 ********************************************************************** NEW JERSEY LEGISLATURE APPROVES MORATORIUM ON DEATH PENALTY; NEW JERSEY WOULD BE FIRST STATE IN 'MODERN ERA' TO ENACT MORATORIUM LAW Amid growing national concern over flaws with capital punishment, the New Jersey Assembly Monday approved a one-year ban on executions in the state and said it would study how the death penalty is administered. If, as expected, the legislation is signed by New Jersey's outgoing governor by Monday, Jan. 16, New Jersey will become the 1st state since executions resumed in the 1970s to enact legislation establishing a moratorium. Two other states - Illinois and Maryland - enacted moratoriums as a result of executive orders but not as a result of state legislative action. The bill passed Monday on a vote of 55 to 21 with two abstentions; previously, it had passed the Senate on a strong bipartisan vote of 30 to 6. NCADP helped its affiliate, New Jerseyans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, by mobilizing death penalty opponents in New Jersey and urging them to contact their state senators. New Jersey's action comes at a time when voters increasingly are questioning whether innocent people are sentenced to death. Just last month, the Houston Chronicle published an investigative series strongly suggesting that a person executed in Texas, Ruben Cantu, may well have been innocent. This week, DNA tests could show whether Roger Keith Coleman of Virginia was innocent of the crime for which he was executed in 1992. "Across the country, people are becoming increasingly aware that the death penalty risks executing the innocent and discriminates on the basis of race, geography and whether one can afford a good lawyer," said Diann Rust-Tierney, executive director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. "New Jersey legislators are responding to this growing awareness. No one wants an innocent person to spend even one day on death row, much less be executed." Rust-Tierney noted that 2 other states, California and North Carolina, have approved bills creating commissions that will study the death penalty.> She predicted that within the next two years a number of states will debate abolition and moratorium bills, other death penalty reforms and bills to examine capital punishment. (source: NCADP) VIRGINIA: Media Release The U.S. Supreme Court today vacated a lower court ruling in the case of Darrick Walker, whose case is replete with scientific error, false eyewitness testimony and prosecutorial misconduct. Walker was sentenced to death in 1998 for the murders of Stanley Roger Beale and Clarence Threat. Walker, who supporters say is mentally retarded, has always maintained his innocence. A supposed eyewitness first told police she did not see the killer in one of the murders. Later, while on the witness stand, she identified Walker as the murderer. Prosecutors did not make this information available to the defense. The court's action Monday was based on its 2004 ruling in Banks v. Dretke, a Texas case involving prosecutorial misconduct. That case, in which prosecutors withheld exculpatory information from the defense, led Justice Ruth Ginsburg to declare, "When police or prosecutors conceal significant exculpatory or impeaching material, we hold it is ordinarily incumbent upon the state to set the record straight..A rule declaring 'prosecutor may hide, defendant must seek,' is not tenable in a system constitutionally bound to accord defendants due process." Jack Payden-Travers, spokesman for Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, said today's overturning of a U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling sends a message to Virginia prosecutors that they are not allowed to bend and twist the rules in order to secure a conviction. "The U.S. Supreme Court has sent a pointed message to the state of Virginia: prosecutors must play by the rules, especially when the death penalty is at stake," Payden-Travers said. "Walker was denied a fair trial and once again, new questions have been raised about the fairness and the accuracy of Virginia's death penalty system." Payden-Travers added that the ruling comes in the wake of the state's admission that it destroyed DNA evidence in the case of Robin Lovitt, whose death sentence was commuted to life in prison late last year, and just after outgoing Gov. Mark Warner ordered that DNA be re-tested in this case of executed inmate Roger Keith Coleman. "How many blunders, how much evidence of misconduct by the state must we endure before we acknowledge the obvious: something is wrong with Virginia's death penalty system," Payden-Travers said. "It is time to stop and study what is wrong with Virginia's death penalty. It is time for a moratorium." (source: VADP) CALIFORNIA: Lawmaker Wants Moratorium On Death Penalty----Bill Scheduled For Vote In Assembly Committee Crime victims and Republican lawmakers condemned an effort at the state Capitol Monday to stop enforcement of the death penalty for a few years. Backers of the moratorium said the delay is needed to ensure that no one is wrongfully executed. San Quentin's death row is gearing up for the largest number of executions in years. So, some Capitol Democrats are calling for a time-out of 3 years to study flaws in the system, which outraged some crime victims. "Assembly Bill 1121 is really nothing more than another instance of condemned killers and their apologists undermining the will of the people," said Marc Klaas, whose daughter, Polly, was killed in October of 1993. "You wonder why the citizens of California think so low of the legislators up here. This is one of the reasons," said Crime Victims United spokeswoman Harriet Salarno. The moratorium bill's author -- Assemblyman Paul Koretz, D-North Hollywood -- showed up at the Capitol Monday to listen to his critics. "All it is, Mr. Koretz, and all those who may support your bill, is a 'be kind to killers act,'" said Assemblyman Todd Spitzer, R-Orange. Spitzer called the measure a veiled attempt to abolish capital punishment altogether. "It absolutely is not an attempt to get around the death penalty," Koretz said. Koretz said that with new DNA technology, he wants to make sure the wrong people are not executed. He said it's outrageous that he is being accused of coddling criminals. "I think the Republican side is using this to their political advantage because there's no advantage to protect the innocent. They're not only tough on the guilty, but they're tough on the innocent," Koretz said. Bill supporters released a letter Monday, signed by current and former law enforcement, saying: "The execution of an innocent person is unacceptable, and it is imperative that California takes every precaution to ensure that it never happens." But in a state where death penalty support is strong, is this measure going anywhere? "I wish it would because I think it's time for the debate. But it's an election year," said Senate President pro Tem Don Perata. The bill is scheduled for a vote in the Assembly Public Safety Committee on Tuesday. (source: KCRA News) FLORIDA----new death sentence St. Petersburg man sentenced to death for killing Tampa couple A St. Petersburg man who killed a Tampa couple in November 2003 was sentenced to death Monday. Relatives of victims Richard and Karla Van Dusen hugged in the courtroom after state Circuit Judge J. Rogers Padgett imposed the death penalty on 53-year-old William Deparvine. Deparvine showed no emotion when Padgett pronounced sentence. In August a jury found Deparvine guilty of 1st-degree murder and carjacking, and then recommended by a vote of 8-4 that he be executed. Prosecutors said Deparvine, who was on supervised release from prison at the time, shot the couple in the head at close range after buying a vintage Chevrolet pickup truck from them. He was arrested in January 2004, 3 months after their bodies were found lying face-down in a dirt driveway in northwest Hillsborough County. At trial Deparvine said he last saw the couple when the Van Dusens delivered the pickup truck he purchased to his St. Petersburg apartment. But investigators used DNA evidence and phone records to link him to the crime. (source: Associated Press)
