TRENTON — Gov. Jon S. Corzine signed into law a measure repealing New Jersey’s death penalty on Monday, making the state the first in a generation to abolish capital punishment.
Mr. Corzine also issued an order commuting the sentences of the eight men on New Jersey’ death row to life in prison with no possibility of parole, ensuring that they will stay behind bars for the rest of their lives.
In an extended and often passionate speech from his office at the state capitol, Mr. Corzine declared an end to what he called “state-endorsed killing,” and said that New Jersey could serve as a model for other states.
“Today New Jersey is truly evolving,” he said. “I believe society first must determine if its endorsement of violence begets violence, and if violence undermines our commitment to the sanctity of life. To these questions, I answer yes.”
New Jersey has not executed anyone since 1963, when Ralph Hudson was put to death in the electric chair for stabbing of his estranged wife.
In 1982, six years after the United States Supreme Court allowed states to start executing prisoners again, New Jersey re-established its death penalty. It switched its method of execution to lethal injection and built a new execution chamber at the New Jersey State Prison here, where death row is housed.
While juries have sentenced more than four dozen people to death since then, the vast majority of those sentences were overturned on appeal. And even if the state had wanted to follow through with an execution, it would not have been able to.
A state appeals court ruled in 2004 that New Jersey’s procedures for administering the death penalty were unconstitutional. The state rewrote the procedures but never finalized them, and they expired in 2005.
The process of abolishing the death penalty moved forward at an unusually fast pace. A bill replacing capital punishment with life in prison with no chance of parole first passed a Senate committee in May, but did not advance any further until this month. Leaders of both chambers in state Legislature made the bill a top priority of the current legislative session, and vowed after the November elections to vote on the issue before the end of the year.
In less than two weeks, the bill passed the state Senate and General Assembly and was signed by the governor.
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