10 January 2006 :

New Jersey lawmakers approved a moratorium on the death penalty, becoming the first US 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 November 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 US 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.
"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.
US 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 US Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976 after declaring it unconstitutional in 1972.
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. Hands Off Cain asked Rome Mayor Walter Veltroni to illuminate the Coliseum. “Illuminating the Coliseum for the decision taken by the New Jersey Legislature would be a way of highlighting the tendency present in recent years in the United States of abandoning capital punishment,” declared HOC Secretary Sergio D’Elia, adding that, “Illuminating the New Jersey moratorium would also be a way of encouraging urgency in passing a resolution for a universal moratorium at the UN General Assembly thus giving dignity to those sentenced to death not only in the United States but also to the thousands of men and women on death rows in totalitarian and illiberal states which account for over 98% of all annual executions”.