The New Jersey legislature is poised to move moratorium legislation to victory early next year. The Equal Justice USA Northeast field office has been working side by side with our state partner, New Jerseyans for a Death Penalty Moratorium (NJDPM), throughout the year to help make the dream a reality. The groups upped the ante when NJDPM released a Rutgers-Eagleton poll in May 2002 that shows 66% of New Jerseyans, including death penalty supporters, support a one-year moratorium and study of the state’s death penalty. EJUSA and NJDPM also produced and distributed Time Out: Perspectives on New Jersey’s Death Penalty, a video narrated by Susan Sarandon. Time Out features Garden State residents impacted by the death penalty and state experts in criminal justice, law enforcement, and victims’ advocates. Time Out has been distributed to hundreds of schools, churches, and community groups throughout New Jersey. EJUSA and NJDPM have organized successful community, legal, and religious forums in Newark and Camden and expanded the state tally of moratorium endorsers to more than 180 groups.
All combined, this grassroots organizing push has generated significant momentum in the state legislature. EJUSA and NJDPM, working closely with the Peoples Organization For Progress, the New Jersey Council of Churches, the NAACP, the New Jersey Catholic Conference, and other key state groups, expect to see a hearing on Assembly Bill A1913 soon. The bill creates a commission to study all aspects of New Jersey’s death penalty and calls for a suspension of executions until the commission completes its report. The bill does not legally mandate the moratorium. However, a fall Federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals decision in the case of death row inmate Robert Marshall has delayed executions in New Jersey by at least 18 months. New Jersey has not executed anyone in nearly 40 years. The court’s decision provides an immediate window of opportunity for a comprehensive study of the death penalty. Organizers are confident that if the bill passes in 2003, New Jersey won’t face an execution before the study is complete. Bipartisan legislative support for A1913 and a ripe political climate make passage likely in early 2003.
