"NJ repeals death penalty" Big deal...

Thursday, December 13, 2007

From the Washington Post:

"NEW YORK, Dec. 13 -- New Jersey is set to become the first state to legislatively abolish the death penalty since the Supreme Court restored it in the mid-1970s. Opponents of capital punishment hope the state's action may prompt a rethinking of the moral and practical implications of the practice in other states.

Big deal. New Jersey wouldn't execute anyone, anyway, since they reinstated the death penalty.

"New Jersey's Democratic-controlled General Assembly voted 44 to 36 to repeal the death penalty and replace it with life in prison without parole. The action followed a similar vote by the Senate on Monday. Gov. Jon S. Corzine, a Democrat and a death penalty opponent, has said he would sign the legislation."

I am a flip-flopper on the issue of the death penalty. I used to be one of those people who thought that it was better to let 10 guilty men live rather than kill one innocent person. Radio talk show personality Dennis Prager turned my thinking around. I now believe that it's society's responsibility to punish murderers with their own death. I would feel this way even if it were one of my own children or grandchildren who committed the crime.

To let a murderer live is to say to the victim, "I'm sorry that you were in the wrong place at the wrong time, but I am not comfortable executing the one who murdered you." A rather cowardly approach me thinks.