[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----USA, US MIL., N.H., N.J.

[Rick Halperin]

Dec. 14



USA:

Death penalty ban distant, despite state vote


New Jersey's abolition vote this week highlights scrutiny of the death
penalty in America, and analysts say it could be a small step in the
direction of an eventual nationwide ban.

But with capital punishment still on the books in 36 states, a
conservative majority on the Supreme Court, and broad political support
for putting the worst offenders to death, the road to abolition will be
long.

"Ultimate abolition is indeed a long way off," said Stuart Banner, a
professor at the UCLA School of Law and author of "The Death Penalty: An
American History."

"I'd be very surprised if the (Supreme) Court casts any doubt any time
soon on the constitutionality of capital punishment in general."

New Jersey on Thursday became the first state legislature since the 1960s
to abolish the death penalty. Coming on top of an unofficial moratorium on
executions, some had questioned whether the move by New Jersey was a step
toward national abolition.

The unofficial moratorium has been in place since just after the Supreme
Court said on September 25 that it would decide an appeal by two death row
inmates from Kentucky arguing that the three-chemical cocktail used in
lethal injections inflicted unnecessary pain and suffering. One convicted
killer was executed in Texas hours later but none have been since then.

Lethal injection has come under increased scrutiny after executions in
Florida and California in which inmates took up to 30 minutes to die. All
but one of the states with the death penalty and the federal government
use lethal injection for executions.

The court's decision is not expected before the middle of next year but if
it decides that the current cocktail is unconstitutional, states could
seek alternative methods.

Still, capital punishment opponents have taken heart because of 2 trends:
declining numbers of both executions carried out and death sentences being
handed down.

The number of death sentences imposed in 2005 -- the last year for which
there is complete data -- was 128, way down from 317 in 1996. And if the
moratorium holds as expected until the end of this year, America will have
executed 42 inmates in 2007, the lowest number since 1994, when 31 were
put to death.

One of the main reasons for this newfound hesitancy is concern about
wrongful convictions, many related to perceived racial bias against black
defendants.

No U.S. court has found that anyone has been executed in the past three
decades for a crime they did not commit, but DNA and other evidence has
exonerated 125 inmates since 1973 who were awaiting execution on death
row, according to the Washington-based Death Penalty Information Center.

There is broad political support for the death penalty, especially for the
most heinous crimes. This spans the political spectrum, from liberals who
do not want to be seen as "soft" on crime to conservative Christians who
see Biblical sanction for taking an "eye for an eye."

All the Republican presidential candidates with the exception of Texan
maverick Ron Paul support the death penalty. On the Democratic side, the
three front-runners, Senators Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John
Edwards all back it.

And political support is strongest in the South, which is expected to keep
executing people until the Supreme Court tells it otherwise.

"The South is a region with a traditional political culture which sees the
death penalty as a means of maintaining social order," said Cal Jillson, a
political scientist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, the South has carried
out 901 of the 1,099 executions, since the U.S. Supreme Court lifted a ban
on the practice in 1976.

Texas had led the way by far with 405, while the Northeast has only
carried out 4, highlighting the regional divide.

New Jersey had not executed any convicted criminals since 1963, making its
vote mostly symbolic.

However, some commentators see the possibility of a domino effect from New
Jersey's move, albeit over a period of years.

"States have often looked to their neighbors in deciding whether to modify
or abolish capital punishment. If several states were to abolish the death
penalty over the next decade, the constitutional basis for attacking the
death penalty would be substantially strengthened," said Jordan Steiker, a
professor at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law.

"If death sentencing rates continue to decline, execution rates remain
low, and several states abandon the penalty as a matter of law (and not
just practice), judicial abolition would become a very real prospect," he
said.

(source: Reuters)






US MILITARY:

Death penalty is possible in court-martial on Suffern captain's slaying


A military authority presiding over the court-martial of an Army soldier
accused of slaying two officers in Iraq has ruled that it will remain a
death penalty case.

Lt. Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III's ratification of a military judge's order
was required before the case could proceed. The announcement came in a
statement this evening from Fort Bragg, N.C., where the court-martial
hearings have been taking place.

Staff Sgt. Alberto Martinez Troy, N.Y., is charged with two counts of
premeditated murder in the 2005 deaths of Army Capt. Phillip Esposito, 30,
of Suffern who was his company commander, and Lt. Louis E. Allen, 34, of
Milford, Pa., second in command of the 42nd Infantry Division's
headquarters support company in Tikrit, Iraq.

Their deaths are considered by the military the first incident of fragging
since the U.S. war in Iraq began. "Fragging" is the military term for
killing a superior officer, especially by a hand grenade.

(source: The Journal News)






NEW HAMPSHIRE:

N.H. death penalty faces another test ---- Millionaire charged with murder
for hire

Lawyers for millionaire John Brooks, charged with hiring men to kidnap and
kill a Derry man, have filed several challenges to New Hampshire's death
penalty. The law, they argue, unfairly applies to arbitrary types of
murder and does not contain safeguards to avoid convicting innocent
people.

The legal team also said New Hampshire can't justify putting Brooks to
death when it has chosen not to apply the death penalty to other eligible
cases in years past.

"Perhaps the most powerful reason for concluding that New Hampshire's
death penalty law violates the state constitution is empirical," the
defense team said in its filing. "Of the 37 states with operative death
penalty laws on the books, New Hampshire is unique in its history of
non-enforcement and disuse."

Some of the challenges by Brooks's lawyers are similar to those raised in
recent months by public defenders representing Michael Addison, who is
facing the death penalty in connection with the shooting death of a
Manchester police officer in October 2006. Superior Court Judge Kathleen
McGuire has rejected each of the Addison challenges to date. Judge Robert
Lynn is handling the Brooks case.

The state attorney general's office has until Jan. 7 to respond to
Brooks's filing.

Brooks, 55, the former president of PolyVac Inc. in Manchester, was
charged in April with capital murder. He is accused of hiring men to lure
Jack Reid Sr. to a Deerfield barn in 2005 to kill him. Brooks was angry
with Reid because he believed Reid had stolen several items from him,
according to court records.

Murder for hire and murder during a kidnapping are two of the six crimes
in New Hampshire that are punishable by death. Brooks's alleged
accomplices have also been charged with murder or conspiracy to commit
murder, but not with capital murder.

Brooks is set to stand trial in August, a month before Addison, because he
has requested a speedy trial. In its nearly 60-page filing, Brooks's legal
team, which includes lawyers from Concord, Boston and beyond, raised
several arguments:

 New Hampshire's death penalty law is too arbitrary to be constitutional
because of the select crimes to which it is applied. Murder during a
kidnapping or rape qualifies, but murder during robbery or arson does not.
It can be used when a police officer or judge is murdered but not when
children are killed. And multiple murders do not apply.

 The law requires a lower culpable mental state than that required in
first-degree murder, which carries the lesser punishment of life in
prison.

 Among the factors that can qualify someone for the death penalty is one
that says a person committed the offense after "substantial" planning and
premeditation. Brooks's lawyers say "substantial" is too vague to be
consistently and fairly applied by a jury.

 Similarly, the "substantial" passage, as written, could be tied to the
underlying felony (the kidnapping or rape) and not the murder itself. That
is unfair, the defense team said.

 New Hampshire's law contains no safeguards to protect innocent people
from being wrongly convicted and put to death. Nothing in the law allows
the trial judge or state Supreme Court to set aside a jury's verdict in
cases where the evidence is enough to legally support a verdict but not
enough to foreclose all doubt against the defendant. Nor does the law
prevent a jury returning a verdict solely on evidence from risky sources,
including accomplices, jailhouse informants or other defendants who
bargain down their charges in exchange for testimony.

 The law constitutes cruel and unusual punishment because it does not
correspond to the state's declining support for the death penalty.
Brooks's team said polls have shown decreasing support. The lawyers also
pointed to the state's decisions not to use the death penalty when it
could have in past cases and to the Legislature's 2000 repeal of the law.
Then-Gov. Jeanne Shaheen vetoed the repeal. (McGuire rejected a similar
challenge in the Addison case after noting that the Legislature has
repeatedly broadened the kinds of crime punishable by death.)

Brooks's defense team includes five attorneys: Christopher Carter of
Concord; Thomas Hoopes and Martin Murphy, both of Boston; David Bruck of
the Washington and Lee University School of Law in Virginia; and Monica
Foster of an Indianapolis firm.

They anticipate that prosecutors may try to dismiss their arguments by
suggesting the trial judge correct any problems with the law with pretrial
orders, jury instructions or other judicial relief.

Brooks's lawyers say that sort of relief will be insufficient.

"It is for the New Hampshire Legislature, not the courts, to fashion a
death penalty statute that comports with the fundamental constitutional
values of this state, and this court should not attempt to fill that
legislative role," they said.

(source: Concord Monitor)






NEW JERSEY:

N.J. passes bill to ban executions----Nationwide effect on Death Rows
unclear


New Jersey on Thursday took a major step toward becoming the first state
since 1965 to ban executions as the state Assembly voted to abolish the
death penalty in favor of life without parole.

The bill, which Gov. Jon Corzine said he would sign within a week, would
spare the 8 men on the state's sparsely populated Death Row; their death
sentences would be changed.

But the effect on Death Rows across the country is less certain. While the
move is historic, New Jersey's Death Row is tiny compared to those of such
busy death penalty states as Texas or Virginia, or those states with large
Death Row populations, such as California or Florida.

Instead, it may prompt states with small Death Rows that rarely carry out
executions -- and that have considered similar legislation -- to take the
step and also ban capital punishment.

"It's highly unlikely that active death penalty states ... will follow the
lead of New Jersey any time soon," said David Dow, a professor at the
University of Houston Law Center who also represents Death Row inmates. "I
don't think this is the beginning of legislative abolition. It may be the
beginning of the beginning of legislative reconsideration."

Indeed, as the death penalty debate has changed over the last decade,
fueled by a growing number of Death Row and DNA exonerations and media
investigations that have suggested innocent people have been executed,
many states have reconsidered their death penalty laws. Illinois declared
a moratorium in 2000, while several other states have conducted extensive
studies of their death penalty laws.

Some state legislatures have had close votes on abolition, according to
Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information
Center, which opposes the death penalty.

Bills in Montana and New Mexico passed one house of the state legislature
but not the second. In Nebraska, supporters came within one vote of
enacting an abolition law. A Colorado legislative committee passed a bill,
but it failed to get out of either house, according to Dieter.

"A lot of states have considered this," Dieter said. "It didn't occur in a
vacuum that all of a sudden they decided to abolish the death penalty.
There is a growing level of reconsideration."

A byproduct of New Jersey's move, particularly in states with small Death
Row populations or states that rarely carry out executions, may be the
growing isolation of the states with busy death chambers, such as
Oklahoma, Virginia and the nation's leading executioner, Texas.

"It may not become obsolete," said Dieter, "but even states such as Texas
that keep it may well be faced with the prospect that they'll be out of
step with the rest of the country."

Already, the growing unease over the death penalty has led to fewer
executions and death sentences. Along with a rising number of
exonerations, the U.S. Supreme Court in recent years has banned executions
of the mentally retarded and juveniles. The court has also taken up a case
that raises questions about the country's execution method, lethal
injection.

The nation's last execution was Sept. 25 in Texas. Since then, executions
have been halted while the Supreme Court considers the lethal injection
case. A decision is expected next year.

The U.S. has put to death 1,099 people since the Supreme Court
reauthorized the death penalty in 1976. In 1999, 98 people were executed,
the most since 1976; last year, 53 people were executed, the lowest since
1996.

Iowa and West Virginia halted executions in 1965.

Joshua Marquis, an Oregon prosecutor and vice president with the National
District Attorneys Association, said the move in New Jersey would not be
so momentous for the national death penalty debate.

And he noted that last year, a majority of Wisconsin residents approved an
advisory referendum to bring the death penalty back to that state.

"New Jersey wasn't enthusiastically putting people to death in the first
place," he said. "I don't see this as some kind of a sea change."

New Jersey's legislation followed the work of a special state commission
that earlier this year found that the death penalty was a more expensive
sentence than life in prison, had not been effective as a deterrent to
murder and carried the risk of executing an innocent person.

The New Jersey Senate approved the bill on Monday. The state Assembly's
approval came on Thursday in a 44-36 vote. Corzine, a Democrat, has
pledged he would sign the bill.

"It's time New Jersey got out of the execution business," said Assemblyman
Wilfredo Caraballo, a Democrat who supported the legislation. "Capital
punishment is costly, discriminatory, immoral and barbaric. We're a better
state than one that puts people to death."

Senate Republicans had sought to retain the death penalty for those who
murder law-enforcement officials, rape and murder children, and for
terrorists, but the Senate rejected the idea.

Democrats control New Jersey's Legislature.

Among the death row inmates who would be spared is Jesse Timmendequas, a
sex offender convicted of murdering 7-year-old Megan Kanka in 1994.

That case sparked Megan's Law, which requires law-enforcement agencies to
notify the public about convicted sex offenders living in their
communities. Megan's parents had urged the New Jersey Legislature not to
strike down the death penalty.

"The key fact," said Dow, who has handled numerous cases and written a
book about capital punishment, "is that New Jersey is a state that has had
a death penalty law but hasn't been active."

(source: Chicago Tribune)

**********************

Death penalty foes declare historic victory after NJ vote


Death penalty foes are declaring a historic victory with New Jersey poised
to become the 1st state in 4 decades to abolish the death penalty.

The Assembly voted 44-36 on Thursday to approve the legislation. It passed
the Senate on Monday by a 21-16 vote. Gov. Jon S. Corzine said he will
sign it within a week.

"This is a historic day," said David Fathi, director of the U.S. program
at Human Rights Watch. "The elected representatives of a U.S. state have
definitively rejected the death penalty."

Supporters hoped New Jersey's move would inspire others to follow suit.
According to the Washington-based Death Penalty Information Center, 37
states have the death penalty.

"New Jersey stands to embolden lawmakers who were as fearful of
eliminating capital punishment as they were of keeping it," said Larry
Cox, executive director of Amnesty International USA. "This is a harbinger
of things to come."

Bills to abolish the death penalty were recently approved by a Colorado
House committee, the Montana Senate and the New Mexico House. But none of
those bills has advanced further.

The nation's last execution was Sept. 25 in Texas. Since then, executions
have been delayed pending a U.S. Supreme Court decision on whether
execution by lethal injection violates the constitutional ban on cruel and
unusual punishment.

New Jersey reinstated the death penalty in 1982, 6 years after the U.S.
Supreme Court allowed states to resume executions, but nobody has been
executed in the Garden State since 1963.

A special state commission found in January that the death penalty was a
more expensive sentence than life in prison, hasn't deterred murder and
risks killing an innocent person.

"We have seized the moment and are poised to join the ranks of other
states and countries that view the death penalty as discriminatory,
immoral and barbaric," said Assemblyman Wilfredo Caraballo, D-Essex.

The measure approved Thursday would spare 8 men on the state's death row,
including the sex offender whose crimes sparked Megan's Law.

The bill gives them 60 days to decide whether to waive appeals and be
sentenced to life in prison without parole. If such a motion isn't made,
the inmate would remain under the death sentence but would likely never be
executed.

New Jersey has been barred from executing anyone under a 2004 court ruling
that declared invalid the state's lethal injection procedures.

Among the death row inmates who would be spared is Jesse Timmendequas, a
sex offender convicted of murdering 7-year-old Megan Kanka in 1994. That
case sparked a Megan's Law, which requires law enforcement agencies to
notify the public about convicted sex offenders living in their
communities.

"There is no doubt whatsoever that those criminals now sitting on death
row are guilty," said Assemblyman Richard Merkt, R-Morris. "Yet their
lives are being spared in the name of justice. Tell me then, where is the
justice for Megan Kanka and her family?"

But Corzine said life in prison without parole offers a more certain
outcome than death penalty sentences that come with years of appeals.

"This is an issue of conscience and the responsible administration of
justice," Corzine said.

On the Net: New Jersey Legislature: http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/

Death Penalty Study Commission: http://tinyurl.com/2bajcn

Megan Nicole Kanka Foundation: http://www.megannicolekankafoundation.org/

***************************

N. Jersey votes to ban death penalty


New Jersey will become the 1st state in 4 decades to abolish the death
penalty under a measure lawmakers approved Thursday and the governor
intends to sign within days.

Assembly members voted 44-36 to replace the death sentence with life in
prison without parole. The state Senate approved the bill Monday, and Gov.
Jon S. Corzine, a Democrat, has said he will sign the bill within a week.

A special state commission found in January that the death penalty was a
more expensive sentence than life in prison, hasn't deterred murder and
risks killing an innocent person.

"We would be better served as a society by having a clear and certain
outcome for individuals that carry out heinous crimes," Corzine said.
"That's what I think we're doing, making certain that individuals would be
imprisoned without any possibility of parole."

New Jersey Assemblyman Christopher Bateman speaks at the state house in
Trenton, N.J., Thursday. He co-sponsored a measure to abolish the state's
death penalty. (David Gard/AP)

The measure would spare eight men on the state's death row, including
Jesse Timmendequas, a sex offender convicted of murdering 7-year-old Megan
Kanka in 1994. That case sparked a Megan's Law, which requires law
enforcement agencies to notify the public about convicted sex offenders
living in their communities.

Marilyn Flax, whose husband Irving was kidnapped and murdered in 1989 by
death row inmate John Martini Sr., said she seethes at the thought Martini
will remain alive "while my innocent, loving, adoring husband lies in a
grave."

"I feel the system has spit on me, has slapped me and I am fuming," Flax
said. Republicans said that's why they would vote against the bill.

Assemblyman Richard Merkt said the bill was "a victory for murderers and
rapists."

"It does not benefit families. It does not benefit New Jersey society. It
does not benefit justice," he said.

Senate Republicans had sought to retain the death penalty for those who
murder law enforcement officials, rape and murder children, and
terrorists, but the Senate rejected the idea.

Democrats control the Legislature.

Although New Jersey reinstated the death penalty in 1982, six years after
the U.S. Supreme Court allowed states to resume executions, no one has
been executed in the Garden State since 1963.

The last states to eliminate the death penalty were Iowa and West Virginia
in 1965, according to the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

New Jersey has been barred from executing anyone under a 2004 court ruling
that determined the state had to revise procedures on how the penalty
would be imposed; It never did.

Among those who have been executed in New Jersey are Bruno Richard
Hauptmann, who was executed in 1936 for the kidnapping and murder of
aviator Charles Lindbergh's son.

The nation has executed 1,099 people since the U.S. Supreme Court
reauthorized the death penalty in 1976. In 1999, 98 people were executed,
the most since 1976; last year 53 people were executed, the lowest since
1996.

Other states have considered abolishing the death penalty recently, but
none has advanced as far as New Jersey. According to the Washington-based
Death Penalty Information Center, 37 states have the death penalty.

Bills to abolish the death penalty were recently approved by a Colorado
House committee, the Montana Senate and the New Mexico House. But none of
those bills has advanced.

The nation's last execution was Sept. 25 in Texas. Since then, executions
have been delayed pending a U.S. Supreme Court decision on whether
execution through lethal injection violates the constitutional ban on
cruel and unusual punishment.

(source for both: Associated Press)

********************

New Jersey lawmakers vote to end death penalty


Gov. Jon Corzine says he will sign the bill into law, which would make the
state the first to repeal capital punishment since 1965.


The New Jersey Assembly voted Thursday to abolish the death penalty,
poising the state to become the first since 1965 to repeal capital
punishment.

The state Senate already passed the measure, and Gov. Jon Corzine, a death
penalty foe, pledged to sign the bill, probably early next week. Those on
death row will have their sentences commuted to life in prison without the
possibility of parole.

Although New Jersey has not had an execution since 1963, the campaign has
drawn national attention, in part because it was launched by Lorry Post,
the father of a murder victim. Sister Helen Prejean, whose work against
the death penalty was dramatized in the film "Dead Man Walking," has made
a dozen trips to New Jersey and predicted that other states would follow
its lead.

However, recent attempts to abolish the death penalty in Colorado,
Montana, Nebraska and New Mexico have faltered, although it seems possible
that Maryland, whose governor opposes capital punishment, will go the same
route as New Jersey.

Currently, there is a nationwide de facto moratorium on the death penalty,
spurred by legal challenges to lethal injection, the method of execution
in most states. The Supreme Court will take up the issue in January.

Austin Sarat, a professor of jurisprudence and political science at
Amherst College and the author of two books on the death penalty, said New
Jersey's action was a sign that the nation was "in a period of national
reconsideration of the death penalty." He noted that both death sentences
and executions had dropped in recent years.

Sarat predicted executions would be outlawed state by state but
acknowledged that it was "likely to be a long road to abolition."

At a news conference in Trenton, N.J., Corzine said, "We would be better
served as a society by having a clear and certain outcome for individuals
who carry out heinous crimes. And that's what I think we are doing --
making certain that individuals will be in prison without any possibility
of parole."

One of the death row inmates whose life will be spared is Jesse
Timmendequas, who was convicted of molesting and murdering 7-year-old
Megan Kanka in 1994. That killing led to the passage of Megan's Law, which
requires law enforcement agencies to notify the public when convicted sex
offenders are living in their neighborhoods.

Megan's father, Richard Kanka, was among those who opposed the
legislation. "For you people to sit there and want to repeal this, in this
state, is a mistake," he testified at a hearing this year. "Anybody that's
on death row belongs there."

But his position was not shared by Post, whose daughter was killed in
Georgia. Post's group, New Jerseyans for Alternatives to the Death
Penalty, was started in a church basement eight years ago. It has grown to
12,000 members and has forged an unusual coalition of clerics, legislators
from both parties, families of slaying victims and law enforcement
officials, all of whom decided that they wanted a change.

Although some members said they still favored the idea of the death
penalty, there was a broad acknowledgment that it was not working in New
Jersey. A statewide poll taken this year showed that New Jersey residents,
by a margin of 51% to 41%, preferred that inmates received life in prison
without the possibility of parole rather than the death penalty.

This week, state Senate President Richard J. Codey, a Democrat, said he
had voted for the death penalty law in 1982 because it provided for
"exhaustive appeals" to ensure the right person was convicted. But since
then, although prosecutors have garnered 60 death sentences, 52 have been
reversed and there have been no executions.

"How can I argue the deterrent effect of the death penalty when we haven't
had one?" Codey asked at a hearing in Trenton on Monday.

In late November, family members of 62 murder victims sent a letter to
legislators urging passage of the abolition bill. The relatives emphasized
the personal toll the process had taken on them.

"Capital punishment drags victims' loved ones through an agonizing and
lengthy process, holding out the promise of one punishment in the
beginning and often resulting in a life sentence in the end anyway," the
authors wrote.

"A life without parole sentence for killers right from the start would
keep society safe, hold killers responsible for their brutal and depraved
acts, and would start as soon as we left the courtroom instead of leaving
us in limbo," the family members said.

Edward DeFazio, the district attorney in Hudson County, N.J., who has
played a key role in the abolition campaign, said in a letter to
legislators that the death penalty had cost the state $250 million, with
little to show for it.

"New Jersey citizens have borne the brunt of the costs of those death
penalty trials and reversals . . . diverting precious resources that could
have made our jobs easier and kept the public safe," he said.

DeFazio served on a 13-member commission that issued a 100-page report in
January recommending that the death penalty be repealed. The group, which
also included police chiefs, acknowledged that "despite our very best
intentions, the system makes mistakes and innocent people are wrongfully
sentenced to death." Months before the commission report, a man who spent
7 years on death row for a killing was cleared by DNA testing.

The lone dissenter on the commission was John F. Russo, a former president
of the state Senate who wrote the death penalty statute.

He contended that "the fundamental problem" was "liberal judges and other
individuals who have consistently disregarded the legislative will and
refused to enforce the law as written."

But that view did not win the day.

Former real estate agent Celeste Fitzgerald, the chief organizer of the
abolition campaign, said she was pleased with the outcome.

"We will move forward with a sentence that offers certainty for victims'
families and is more just," she said.

"We have exposed the flaws in the death penalty and have shown how it
harms us in practice," Fitzgerald said.

In particular, she said, capital punishment in the court system "condemns
the family members of murder victims to an indefinite life in limbo" and
ties them for years "to the killer of their loved one."

(source: Los Angeles Times)

**********************

NJ Senate and Assembly roll call


The New Jersey Senate voted 21-16 on Monday to abolish the death penalty
and replace it with life in prison without parole.

Voting yes were 17 Democrats and 4 Republicans.

Voting no were 3 Democrats and 13 Republicans.

X denotes those not voting.

Democrats -- Adler Y; Bryant Y; Buono Y; Codey Y; Coniglio Y; Cunningham
Y; Gill Y; Girgenti Y; James X; Karcher Y; Kenny Y; Lesniak Y; Madden N;
Rice X; Sacco N; Sarlo Y; Scutari N; Smith Y; Sweeney Y; Turner Y; Vitale
Y; Weinberg Y.

Republicans -- Allen Y; Asselta N; Bark N; Bucco N; Cardinale N; Ciesla N;
Connors N; Inverso N; Kavanaugh X; Kean N; Kyrillos N; Lance N; Littell N;
Martin Y; McCullough Y; McNamara N; Palaia Y; Singer N.

___

The New Jersey Assembly voted 44-36 on Thursday to abolish the death
penalty and replace it with life in prison without parole.

Voting yes were 41 Democrats and 3 Republicans.

Voting no were 9 Democrats and 27 Republicans.

X denotes those not voting.

Democrats -- Albano Y; Barnes Y; Bodine N; Burzichelli N; Caraballo Y;
Chivukula Y; Cohen Y; Conaway N; Conners Y; Cruz-Perez Y; Cryan Y; Diegnan
N; Egan Y; Epps Y; Evans Y; Fisher Y; Giblin Y; Gordon Y; Green Y;
Greenstein N; Greenwald Y; Gusciora Y; Jasey Y; Johnson Y; Lampitt Y;
Manzo Y; Mayer N; McKeon Y; Moriarty N; Oliver Y; Panter N; Payne Y; Pou
Y; Prieto Y; Quigley Y; Roberts Y; Scalera Y; Schaer Y; Stack Y; Stanley
Y; Stender Y; Truitt Y; Vainieri Huttle Y; Van Drew N; Vas Y; Vega Y; Voss
Y; Watson Coleman Y; Whelan Y; Wisniewski Y.

Republicans -- Baroni N; Bateman Y; Beck N; Biondo N; Blee Y; Bramnick N;
Carroll N; Chatzidakis N; Connors N; Corodemus N; Dancer N; DeCroce N;
Doherty N; Gregg N; Handlin N; Holzapfel N; Karrow N; Kean N; Malone N;
McHose N; Merkt N; Munoz N; O'Toole N; Pennacchio N; Rooney N; Rumpf Y;
Rosso N; Thompson N; Vandervalk N; Wolfe N.

(source: Newsday)