New Jersey Looks to Abolish Death Penalty

This week, the New Jersey Senate voted to abolish the death penalty in the state, moving closer to becoming the first state to do so since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated it in 1976. The bill now moves to the Assembly, where it is expected to pass, and Governor Corzine, a staunch opponent of the death penalty, has said he would sign the measure into law.

New Jersey is not the first state to recently move towards repealing the death penalty. Last year alone legislatures in Maryland, Montana, Nebraska and New Mexico have debated bills to repeal death penalty statutes, but each measure failed. In 2004, the New York Supreme Court struck down the state's death penalty as unconstitutional and the Kansas Supreme Court voided its death penalty laws. In 2000, Illinois' then Republican Governor George Ryan imposed a moratorium on the state's death penalty, which continues today. Maryland's Governor also imposed a moratorium on executions in 2002, but just days after his inauguration, Governor Erlich lifted the moratorium in 2003 and Maryland executed its first individual after six years in 2004.

Death penalty cases are far more expensive than sentencing people to life without parole. A recent report found that New Jersey spends about $253 million on its death penalty while not executing a single individual since 1976, when the death penalty was reinstated.  New York has spent more than $200 million on its death penalty system, also without any executions. Florida would save $51 million per year by punishing all first-degree murderers with life in prison without parole.

Not to mention that to date, according to the Innocence Project, several people on death row have been exonerated by post-conviction DNA evidence. And, a recent report analyzing polling results, found that the public is losing confidence in the death penalty due to the risk of executing the innocent, the fairness of the process, and the inability of capital punishment to act as a deterrent. In New Jersey, by a margin of 52 to 39%, voters say they would prefer to drop the death penalty in favor of life in prison without parole for those who are convicted of first degree murder.
The U.S. bears the dubious distinction of being the only developed country that still kills people for committing crimes.  Maybe it's time we gave up that title.

Airlines Fight Implementation of Passenger's Bill of Rights

Airline performance has steady declined and so far this year, almost 30% of flights were delayed, canceled or diverted. In response, the New York State legislature overwhelmingly passed a customer bill of rights, that, among other things, requires airports to provide passengers with food, water, fresh air, power and working restrooms on any flight that has left the gate and been on the tarmac for more than three hours. Despite the fact that it seems absurd that airlines have to be told to provide basic necessities for passengers held hostage aboard flights, the airline industry has filed suit in federal court to try to block the law from going into effect. 

According to the attorney for the airline industry, there is no need for the provisions to be legislated. However, in the last year alone, there have been several incidents of passengers stranded on board for over 8 hours. The latest Bureau of Transportation Statistics found that between January and October of this year, over eight thousand flights had taxi-out times longer than two hours. Taxi-out time is the time between when an airplane pushes back from the gate and when the airplane actually takes off. 

Jet Blue Airlines, the carrier who kept their passengers onboard on the ground for 11 hours at JFK in February, voluntarily adopted a Customer Bill of Rights that compensates passengers for ground and departure delays in wake of the disaster.  Also in response to the February crisis, federal versions of a Passenger's Bill of Rights were filed, with the Senate version providing more rights for passengers then the House version.