Advocates fought for N.J. death penalty repeal

Gov. Jon Corzine signs a bill on Dec. 17, 2007, abolishing the death penalty in New Jersey. UMNS photos by John C. Goodwin.A UMNS Report By Linda Bloom*

When New Jersey repealed the death penalty at the end of 2007, United Methodists were among those who squeezed into a small room at the state capitol to watch Gov. Jon Corzine sign the bill.

As the governor noted on that Dec. 17th, grassroots advocacy groups had played a significant role in making New Jersey the first state since 1976 to repeal the death penalty through its legislature. Replacing capital punishment was life in prison without parole.

"Because New Jersey has not executed anyone in 44 years, there is little collective will or appetite for our community to enforce this law and therefore the (death penalty) law has little deterrence value," Corzine said in a statement.

Among the groups he acknowledged was New Jerseyans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (NJADP), a group that had both direct and indirect United Methodist participation, according to John Goodwin, co-chairperson of the denomination's New Jersey Area Task Force on Abolishing the Death Penalty.

Goodwin of Demarest, N.J., a photojournalist retired from the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries, has been interested in death penalty issues since Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed for espionage in 1953.

Advocacy group formed
At the end of 1998, the New Jersey Council of Churches issued a pastoral letter saying the death penalty was wrong. United Methodist Bishop Alfred Johnson, who was one of the signers, formed the task force in 1999.

Soon after, Goodwin also became an executive committee member of NJADP, which at that point was pursuing a moratorium on the death penalty. "It was a secular group, but it had both Roman Catholic and Protestant origins," he explained.

Lorry Post, a Presbyterian, founded the group in 1999 in memory of his daughter, Lisa, who was murdered in Georgia in 1988. He now serves as executive director of Murder Victim Families for Reconciliation. Celeste Fitzgerald, a Catholic, is now the NJADP program director. The current United Methodist Bishop of New Jersey, Sudarshana Devadhar, is a member of the group's advisory committee.

The Rev. Karl Kraft, pastor of the United Methodist Church of Mantua, N.J., located in a county across the river from Philadelphia, had heard about the group and attended a meeting at Post's home.

Kraft said he was inspired by both Post and Fitzgerald. But his real motivation for joining the push against the death penalty was "rooted firmly in how I receive the teachings of Jesus, who came not only as our Lord, but also as our Redeemer," he told United Methodist News Service.

"Everyone deserves the opportunity for redemption, even the most hardened criminal. Executing that criminal effectively removes any possibility of redemption."

Kraft, who has been part of the NJADP executive committee for two years, also believes that Christians must see all human beings as children of God. "We certainly have the right to impose proper punishment on those who commit crimes, but the ultimate judgment must be left to God," he said.

Through the denomination's task force and NJADP, United Methodists often were asked to host meetings or join in letter-writing campaigns. Every year, for years, the task force sent a letter to all 120 state legislators "essentially saying that the UMC has been against the death penalty since 1956," Goodwin said. The annual letter came from the secretary of what is now the Greater New Jersey Annual (regional) Conference, with a resolution passed by the conference.

Letter-writing is key
The Rev. B.J. Kim, pastor of the Rutherford (N.J.) United Methodist Church in the northern part of the state, is a member of the conference task force. He hosted a public meeting for NJADP and organized letter writing.

"Their consistent work really got my attention," Kim said about the task force. "The process itself gave me a kind of lesson."

His church committee wrote letters to the local newspaper and state assembly members supporting the repeal of the death penalty. "We invited the state assemblyman who was against what we were doing," Kim added. "He became the one who voted for us."

The northern congregations were more active in the campaign than those in southern New Jersey, Kraft said. "It was pretty hard to convince people down here that the death penalty should be replaced by life without parole," he said.

For his own congregation, it was not a difficult decision because, he explained, "what we were doing was not anything outside the polity of The United Methodist Church. We're very clear in the Book of Discipline about the death penalty."

The statement in the United Methodist Social Principles opposing the death penalty says that all human life is sacred and that capital punishment "denies the power of Christ to redeem, restore and transform all human beings."

"We believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ and that the possibility of reconciliation with Christ comes through repentance," the Social Principles states. "This gift of reconciliation is offered to all individuals without exception and gives all life new dignity and sacredness."

Study commission report
In January 2006, the New Jersey legislature placed a moratorium on executions and formed the New Jersey Death Penalty Study Commission. The chairman, appointed by the governor, was the Rev. M. William Howard Jr., a Baptist minister and former president of the National Council of Churches. United Methodists were among advocates attending the commission's hearings.

On Jan. 2, 2007, the study commission issued a report and recommendations, stating that ability to execute a small number of persons "is not sufficiently compelling to justify the risk of making an irreversible mistake"; that the death penalty is expensive to carry out; and that life imprisonment in a maximum-security institution would ensure public safety and address other interests, including those of the families of murder victims.

The New Jersey Senate approved an end to capital punishment by a 21-16 vote on Dec. 10. Goodwin was at the statehouse three days later as the assembly debated the bill, a debate that included emotional speeches about murder. After being "tense and upset" during the debate, he found himself to be "incredibly relieved" once the bill was approved by a 44-36 vote. "I almost passed out just thinking that we actually did it," he said.

Kraft, who was on the scene along with Goodwin when Corzine signed the bill the following Monday, found the "standing room only" event "quite overwhelming." He was even more impressed after realizing he had witnessed an event that "would have an influence around the world."

The legislative victory "became a kind of success story for our community," Kim said, and shows what can happen "when God plants a good seed in our heart."

*Bloom is a United Methodist News Service news writer based in New York.