State weighs amendments to death penalty procedures

LAWRENCEVILLE — Nine University students joined community members and religious leaders for a public hearing on proposed changes to the state's lethal injection regulations in a full conference room Friday.

Held by New Jersey's Department of Corrections (DOC), the hearing provided concerned citizens a chance to speak about the proposals before the DOC votes on whether to approve or change them.

The first proposed amendment would allow media access to death row prisoners in the three days prior to execution. The second proposal would supply additional medical equipment in the execution chamber to resuscitate prisoners if a stay is issued after the injection.

A three-judge panel of the Appellate Division voted unanimously last year to impose a moratorium on executions until the proposed amendments are passed or rejected.

The last execution in New Jersey was in 1963, and 11 people are currently on death row.

Princeton Coalition Against Capital Punishment (PCACP) head Danilo Mandic '07 organized a trip to the hearing, and most of the students who attended were PCACP members.

The group, a branch of the Princeton Justice Project, worked with a statewide organization to sponsor a letter-writing campaign in November to push for the hearing. After 200 letters were collected, a hearing was announced.

The speakers at the hearing all favored the amendments, and most were opposed to the death penalty.

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Many of those who spoke against capital punishment had family members who had recently been murdered or executed.

Galloway Township resident Eddie Hicks, whose daughter was murdered, read a statement signed by 13 people who had lost a family member to murder.

"We oppose the State of New Jersey and its Department of Corrections executing anyone, including the killer of our loved ones," Hicks said. "We need justice, not more killing."

The group requested that if the DOC does carry out an execution, they follow the guidelines set forth in the two amendments.

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Lorry Post, the first speaker who also lost his daughter to murder, asked the DOC to "let the public know everything."

Many speakers stressed the importance of public awareness of executions, saying they believed such awareness would elicit dismay at the process.

"As long as the DOC keeps people in the dark, it hinders the democratic process," said Kirk Bloodsworth, the first prisoner whose capital conviction was overturned by DNA evidence.

Other speakers included doctors, community members and representatives from groups such as the League of Women Voters and New Jerseyans Against the Death Penalty (NJADP).

NJADP precipitated the amendments in 2001 when they sued the DOC for not having taken "adequate steps to ensure that it could perform an execution in a constitutionally sound manner."

"[The DOC] is trying to sterilize the process by not having the press available," associate director of NJADP Karen Sisti said to The Daily Princetonian.

The DOC argued that press limitation was justified by "considerations of the inmate's privacy, legitimate penological objections and the security and safety needs of the correctional institution."