KILLER TALK
NJ pols weigh in on national death penalty debate >>
TRENTON >> President Donald Trump’s administration has revived the federal death penalty, sparking major criticism from New Jersey’s top congressional Democrats.
“Attorney General Barr’s decision directing the Bureau of Prisons to resume executions of people on death-row is disturbing and does nothing to advance the cause of justice,” U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, a 2020 presidential candidate, said last Thursday in a press statement. “It’s reflective of the attorney general’s persistent and historic resistance to meaningful reform of our broken criminal justice system.”
The federal government has not executed a prisoner since 2003, but the hiatus will end later this year thanks to U.S. Attorney General William Barr, who issued directives last Thursday resurrecting the dormant practice.
White supremacist and convicted murderer Daniel Lewis Lee, who killed a family of three, is scheduled to be executed via the sleep-inducing drug pentobarbital Dec. 9, according to the Justice Department. Other murderers who’ve exhausted their appellate and post-conviction remedies are scheduled to be executed in the months ahead, a fact that rubs Booker the wrong way.
“Throughout our nation’s history,” he said, “we have seen how the death penalty is not only ineffective and immoral, but also fraught with biases against people of color, low-income individuals, and those with mental illness. It is a waste of taxpayer dollars and does nothing to improve public safety. Instead, capital punishment seeks to satisfy a desire for vengeance and retribution. Our government must represent the best of who we are, not the worst. We can, and should, do better.”
Booker is not alone in his sentiments.
Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman, who represents greater Trenton, slammed the Justice Department’s decision to resume executions of federal inmates.
“Capital punishment is cruel and unusual and has no place in modern, civilized society,” she said last Thursday in a press statement. “Today, the United States is the only Western, industrialized nation that still kills its own citizens. As the world has transitioned from authoritarian states to democracies, the use of capital punishment has faded away, with exceptions like Turkey and the Philippines noted for human rights concerns. Last year, only six countries executed more people than the United States: China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Iraq, and Egypt, company we should not want to keep as we craft our policies.”
Watson Coleman, a former state legislator, voted to abolish New Jersey’s death penalty in December 2007 as a member of the General Assembly.
Before the Legislature acted, a special commission in January 2007 issued a report calling for the death penalty to be abolished in New Jersey and replaced with life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, to be served in a maximum security facility.
“There is no compelling evidence that the New Jersey death penalty rationally serves a legitimate penological intent,” the New Jersey Death Penalty Study Commission said in its report. “The costs of the death penalty are greater than the costs of life in prison without parole, but it is not possible to measure these costs with any degree of precision. There is increasing evidence that the death penalty is inconsistent with evolving standards of decency.”
Ending capital punishment in New Jersey has made the state “stronger,” Watson Coleman said.
“In 2007, while I was serving majority leader in the New Jersey General Assembly, New Jersey abolished the death penalty, becoming the first state to do so by legislative means,” she said in her press statement. “We made the decision, after a lengthy deliberative process, that the arbitrary and irrevocable nature of capital punishment made it incompatible with the concept of criminal justice, and we decided to move in a better direction.”
“I am deeply disturbed,” Watson Coleman added, “that after 16 years without an execution, the federal government will resume state-authorized killings.”
Three executions are scheduled for December and two more are scheduled for next January, according to the Justice Department, which said additional executions will be scheduled in due time.
Attorney General Barr, who received the U.S. Senate’s confirmation in February about 10 weeks after Trump nominated him to serve as the nation’s top cop, defended his pro-death penalty directive as a matter of bipartisan law and order.
“Congress has expressly authorized the death penalty through legislation adopted by the people’s representatives in both houses of Congress and signed by the president,” Barr said last Thursday in a press statement. “Under administrations of both parties, the Department of Justice has sought the death penalty against the worst criminals, including these five murderers, each of whom was convicted by a jury of his peers after a full and fair proceeding. The Justice Department upholds the rule of law — and we owe it to the victims and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system.”
The five prisoners scheduled to be executed are Daniel Lewis Lee, 46; Lezmond Mitchell, 37; Wesley Ira Purkey, 67; Alfred Bourgeois, 55; and Dustin Lee Honken, 51; convicted murderers all.