New Jersey Court Rules State Must Reconsider Lethal Injection Procedures

New Jersey must reconsider its procedure for performing executions, a state appeals court ruled Friday in a case brought by death penalty opponents who claim lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment.

Under the decision, no one can be executed until the state rewrites its rules. However, all 13 of the state's death row inmates have appeals pending and no dates for execution have been set or appear likely for some time.

New Jersey has not executed anyone since 1963, although the death penalty was reinstated in 1982.

The lawsuit by New Jerseyans for a Death Penalty Moratorium objected to several aspects of execution regulations, including the lack of a provision for direct medical attention during the execution.

Lethal injection does not kill instantly, and doctors should be on hand in case a sentence is overturned on appeal after an injection is administered, the court said.

The court also ruled that the public should be allowed to witness executions.

"It is one thing for proponents and opponents to talk about capital punishment as an abstract proposition. It is quite another to see it carried out," Appellate Judge Sylvia Pressler wrote.

New Jersey Court Halts Executions, Orders Review of Lethal Injection

The Appellate Division of New Jersey's Superior Court ruled today that the state's Department of Corrections (DOC) must examine its lethal injection execution procedures before it carries out any death sentences, thereby halting executions in the state until such a review takes place. The ruling notes, "[B]ecause of the patent gravity of the life and death issues implicated by the regulations, we have concluded that rather than simply striking down those regulations, DOC should have the opportunity to give them further consideration, by additional hearings if necessary, and to articulate, if it is able to do so, a supporting basis for those determinations. In the meantime, however, we are satisfied that the regulations as a whole, as they now stand, may not be implemented by the carrying out of a death sentence." The ruling may also require the DOC to release additional documents regarding the state's lethal injection procedures to New Jerseyans for a Death Penalty Moratorium, the non-profit organization that filed the original challenge to the DOC's lethal injection procedures.