New Jersey abolishes death penalty

Dec 17, 2007, 22:20 GMT

Washington - New Jersey on Monday became the first US state to abolish the death penalty in more than 40 years, as Governor Jon Corzine signed into law a measure eliminating the sentence.

'Today New Jersey evolves,' Corzine, a Democrat, said in a statement. '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.'

Corzine also commuted the sentence of the last eight prisoners on the state's death row to life in prison without parole.

The New Jersey Assembly in Trenton voted 44-36 for the measure on Friday, and the state Senate had approved it 21-16 earlier last week.

The death penalty was reinstated in the United States in 1976, but New Jersey has not held any executions since then.

The legislation is the first since that time to eliminate the penalty. Iowa and West Virginia were the last US states to take legislative action halting the death penalty in 1965.

Human Rights Watch, which has advocated against the death penalty, last week praised the move and urged other states to follow in ending the practice.

New Jersey joins 13 other states that do not allow executions. Kansas and New Hampshire also have the policy on the books but have not used the death penalty since it was reinstated.

More than a dozen US states have put off executions this year after the US Supreme Court agreed to hear the arguments on methods of execution - the first such deliberations in more than 125 years.

Forty-two prisoners were executed in the United States this year, the fewest since 1994.