New Jersey Supreme Court Justice Virginia Long was a voice of reason as our state agonized over ending the death penalty. Now, as she heads out the door to retirement, an important new study confirms she got it exactly right.
To explain why she consistently voted against capital punishment — often as the sole dissenter — Long said: “It was the randomness of the application that was constantly bothering me.’’
That’s how the death penalty, which New Jersey eliminated five years ago, is still being applied in other states — haphazardly. Not based on the heinousness of the crime, this new study found.
It was conducted by Stanford law professor John Donohue, who used Connecticut as an example. After analyzing all murder cases over a 34-year period, he found that the death penalty doesn’t punish the worst criminals, as it’s intended to. Inmates on death row were indistinguishable from equally violent offenders who escaped that penalty.
The whole sentencing process, which is similar to that of other death penalty states, is utterly arbitrary, he concluded. The nature of the crime bore almost no relationship to how the case turned out.
Among the 29 defendants who had a death penalty hearing in Connecticut, there was no clear difference in the level of depravity or egregiousness for the 17 who got life without parole and the 12 sentenced to death.
The process is also discriminatory. Black defendants are more likely to be sentenced to death if their victim is white. Defendants in certain geographic areas are also more likely to end up on death row.
These are lessons for bigger states, too. In California, Texas and Ohio, prosecutors in neighboring counties use vastly different criteria for imposing the death penalty. Where somebody resides could easily be the most important factor in determining whether he lives.
And then there are the many innocents sentenced to death. To date, 289 people in the United States have been exonerated by DNA testing, including 17 who served time on death row, according to the Innocence Project. They served an average of 13 years behind bars before being finally set free.
New Jersey made the right call on the death penalty, largely thanks to Long. Now, let her words of warning echo in other states.