posted by Senator Raymond Lesniak on NY voices
Murderers who commit heinous, life destroying acts of violence should not precipitate a policy that hurts America and Americans. A policy that results in the execution of innocent persons and cruelly places many on death row for years, even decades, waiting to be executed for a crime they did not commit. A policy that does not allow the families of murder victims to grieve in private, as most have expressed the desire, on a timetable of their choosing. A policy that deprives law enforcement of resources better spent, in their words, fighting gangs, drug dealers and gun runners.
But that's what we're doing when we believe we need a death penalty. We turn our backs on the innocent, on the family members of murder victims and on law enforcement officials. The death penalty doesn't discriminate. It affects the good as well as the bad.
One of our founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin, quoting from the renown Jurist, Justice Blackstone, said that it's better to allow 100 guilty go free than to imprison an innocent person. When Governor Corzine signed my legislation last year to abolish New Jersey's death penalty, he signed a law that set no one free. My legislation will imprison more murders for life, without parole. It also guarantees that we will never put to death an innocent person, nor cause the innocent to suffer the daily threat of being put to death for a crime they did not commit.
Since the repeal of our death penalty on December 17, 2008, I've written a book, The Road to Abolition: How New Jersey Abolished the Death Penalty. I pray to God it can help legislators in the 36 states which still have the death penalty heed the words of others who support the abolitionist movement, such as the 63 family members of murder victims who stated, in a letter to the New Jersey Legislature:
We are family members and loved ones of murder victims. We desperately miss the parents, children, siblings, and spouses we have lost. We live with the pain and heartbreak of their absence every day and would do anything to have them back. We have been touched by the criminal justice system in ways we never imagined and would never wish on anyone. Our experience compels us to speak out for change.
Though we share different perspectives on the death penalty, every one of us agrees that New Jersey's capital punishment system doesn't work, and that our state is better off without it.
Or more specifically stated by Vicki Schieber whose daughter, Shannon, was murdered in 1998, "The death penalty is a harmful policy that exacerbates the pain for murdered victims' families."
Supporters of the death penalty will say we need to keep the death penalty for the monsters who commit the most heinous murders: monsters such as Byron Halsey, who was convicted of murdering, after sexually assaulting, a seven and eight year old boy and girl. He even confessed to the crime. But this was no monster - just an innocent person convicted of murder.
You who serve so nobly as public defenders understand that when emotions run high, as in the case of the most dramatic, heinous crimes, mistakes are most likely to occur.
Our forefathers, the framers of our Constitution that has protected the rights and liberties of our citizens against intrusion by government, understood the utmost, the highest, importance of the need to protect individual rights: something Public Defenders do, without any glory or much recognition, on a daily basis.
Throughout the course of history of our great nation, the principals of our founding fathers have been challenged by fear. Fear of US citizens of Japanese descent during World War II. Fear of Communism during the Cold War. Fear of US citizens demonstrating for civil rights or against the Vietnam War in the sixties. Fear of non-existent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And fear of attack from terrorists.
Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to threats against the principals established by our founding fathers in our Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Public Defenders protect our constitutional rights against the threat of fear. Many believe what you do is try to keep criminals out of jail. That belief could not be more wrong. You answer to a higher calling.
I am grateful for the honor you bestow upon me today, but it is I who honor you. If Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and the other founders of our great country were here today, they would join me in honoring you, for protecting the United States of American and our Constitution from the threat of fear. I salute you. Keep up the good work. There is no better calling than that our guarding our individual rights and liberties.
On Oct. 17th Senator Lesniak delivered this speech at the Annual Training Conference of the NJ Office of the Public Defender where he was honored for blazing the trail to end the death penalty in New Jersey
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