How Can the Death Penalty be a Deterrent When Courts Won't Let Justice be Served?

By Assembly Republican Leader Alex DeCroce

We live in a state that is suffering from oppressively high taxes, a massive debt load and the stench of political corruption.

Every public opinion poll tells us the same thing: New Jersey residents desperately want property tax relief and clean government – and they want it now. These are their top priorities, and they want them to be ours as well.

So how have the Democrats in control of the Legislature responded?

Not with swift action on property tax relief or ethics reform. On the contrary, they have spent most of their time at voting sessions on issues that are certainly not in the top tier of concerns shared by most New Jerseyans – such as providing free needles for drug addicts (at taxpayer expense) and running up $37.5 billion in new debt (without voter approval) some for projects better left to the private sector, such as stem cell research, to cite just a couple. Too often, their actions defy logic and common sense.

How does handing clean needles to addicts so they can continue their addiction deter drug abuse?

For that matter, how does spending more than a quarter of a billion dollars we don’t have and can ill afford to finance on stem cell research cure New Jersey’s addiction to spending and borrowing?

Now the Democrats want to waste time on another less than urgent issue – determining whether the death penalty for cold-blooded killers should be abolished and replaced with a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment without parole.

How does being soft on crime stem the rising tide of violence in society?

In fact, why bother debating the fate of the death penalty at all when not a single murderer sentenced to death since capital punishment was reinstated in 1982 has ever been executed?

If anything, we should be discussing ways to streamline the appeal process so killers can be put to death before they grow old and die of natural causes in a prison cell (at taxpayer expense).

In 1992, New Jersey voters, by a better than 2-to-1 margin, approved an amendment to the state constitution affirming that the death penalty is not cruel or unusual punishment. Yet today, 25 years after the death penalty was reinstated, not one convicted killer has received a lethal injection. They are essentially spending the rest of their lives behind bars. So why the fuss?

It doesn’t make much sense, but then this is New Jersey. Where else would the state Supreme Court blatantly and routinely ignore the state constitution and the will of the people? Where else would a Legislature dominated by Democrats rush to resolve a “crisis” that doesn’t exist while real emergencies fester? Where else would a special legislative study commission conclude that the death penalty – a punishment that has never been given a chance to prove its effectiveness  – isn’t effective and doesn’t serve a “legitimate purpose”?

How could it be an effective deterrent? It has never been used! Maybe, just maybe if the liberal justices allow a convicted killer to be put to death it might send a message to criminals, gang members and terrorists that we are actually serious about administering justice!

Justice. That’s the “purpose” of the death penalty. I personally believe justice would be served if the killer of 7-year-old Megan Kanka (for whom “Megan’s Law” was named) is executed. I believe anyone who kidnaps 6-year-old from her backyard and strangles her to death should be executed. I believe anyone who sexually assaults a 19-year-old woman and then brutally beats her to death should be executed.

Murderers convicted of these crimes are on death row today. If justice were served, they wouldn’t be.

I had the opportunity to speak personally to Sharon Hazard-Johnson, whose parents Richard and Shirley Hazard were murdered by Brian Wakefield after he invaded their home during a robbery. What she had to say was heart-wrenching. During the trial, there was substantial DNA evidence, physical evidence, witness testimony – even confessions – to justify a guilty verdict and the jury’s decision that Wakefield should be executed. But her parents’ killer remains on death row. Sharon believes his continued existence has made a mockery of the justice system. Killers know the courts will not let them be put to death. Can you blame her?

As long as New Jersey affords protection to the guilty at the expense of the innocent, this mockery will continue.

Many have religious and philosophical objections to capital punishment. That is their right, and I respect their opinion. But the majority of New Jerseyans have a different view, otherwise they would not have approved the death penalty amendment to the state constitution.

Abraham Lincoln astutely observed that we are blessed to have a government “of the people, by the people and for the people.” It’s high time the Legislature and the judiciary took note of the two most important words in this equation – “the people” – and heed what they have to say.