New Jersey lawmakers approved a moratorium on the death penalty Monday, becoming the first U.S. state legislature to block executions since the Supreme Court reinstated the punishment in 1976.
The state Assembly voted 55 to 21 with two abstentions to suspend the death penalty until a commission report due to be given to lawmakers and the governor by Nov. 15. The state Senate approved the measure last month.
The commission will study whether the death penalty deters crime and whether there is a significant difference between the cost of the death penalty and that of life without parole.
New Jersey is one of 38 U.S. states that have the death penalty, although it has not executed anyone since 1963. Ten people are currently on the state's death row.
The bill is expected to be signed by acting Gov. Richard Codey, a Democrat.
Two other states, Illinois and Maryland, have placed a moratorium on the death penalty by the governor's order, although the Maryland measure has now expired. Texas, on the other hand, leads the nation in executions, putting to death 355 people since 1976.
‘Death penalty has failed’
"By any measure, the death penalty has failed the people of New Jersey who have come to know that it risks executing innocent people and wastes millions of taxpayer dollars," said Celeste Fitzgerald, director of New Jerseyans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, a campaign group.
U.S. public support for the death penalty has dropped to a 27-year low of 64 percent in October 2005 from 80 percent in 1994, according to Gallup opinion polls.
The number of executions in the United States dropped to 60 in 2005 from 98 in 1999, the largest number since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976 after declaring it unconstitutional in 1972.
Doubts rise as wrongful convictions do
Public doubts are based on increasing evidence, particularly from DNA testing, of wrongful convictions and an increasing willingness of courts and attorneys to revisit old cases, according to Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a group that campaigns against the policy.
Nationwide, 122 people have been freed from death row since 1973 because of evidence they may not be guilty, Dieter said.
Support for the death penalty has also waned because of the increasing availability of life-without-parole sentences, which are now provided by all but one of the death-penalty states.
In 2004, the United States conducted the fourth-largest number of executions of any country in the world, exceeded only by China, Iran and Vietnam, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.