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New Jersey signs bill to abolish death penalty

20 December 2007, 11:06AM

The US state of New Jersey has joined the global trend towards ending capital punishment, with State Governor, Jon Corzine, signing a bill to abolish the death penalty.

On December the state's assembly voted to replace execution with life imprisonment without parole. Forty-four voted in favour of the bill, with 36 against.

We hope and believe the passing of this bill marks a turning point in the use of the death penalty in the US. New Jersey is the first US state to abolish capital punishment under law in the modern death penalty era, which began in 1972.

No one has been executed in New Jersey since 1963. In the rest of the US, fewer people were executed last year than at any time in the past 10 years, and the figure for 2007 will be even lower.

Since September, when the US Supreme Court announced that it would consider a legal challenge to the use of lethal injections there has been - in practice - a moratorium on executions.

A special New Jersey state commission reported earlier this year that capital punishment had not deterred people from committing murder and there was also the risk of innocent people being executed. As well the commission reported that the death penalty was more expensive than life imprisonment.

We oppose the death penalty in all cases without exception. It is the premeditated and cold-blooded killing of a human being by the state in the name of justice. The death penalty violates the right to life as proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and is cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment. We believes it should never be used and is always a human rights violation.

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