List of people executed in New Jersey

This is a list of people executed in New Jersey. No one has been executed by the state of New Jersey since 1963, although a statute reinstating capital punishment for murder had been in force from 1982 until 2007. New Jersey executed a total of 361 people from its inception to the abolition of the death penalty on December 17, 2007.[1] The first person executed was a slave known to history only as Tom for a rape in 1690. The last execution was of Ralph Hudson for murder on January 22, 1963. Of those executions, 187 occurred in the 20th century.[2] The last execution for a crime other than murder (or conspiracy to murder) was of Andrew Clark in 1872 for rape. The last woman executed was Margaret Meierhoffer in 1881. Except for a dozen slaves executed by burning in the early 18th century, executions in New Jersey were by hanging until 1906 and electrocution since then, with the exception of an execution by hanging in 1909.[3]

In 2006, New Jersey lawmakers drafted a moratorium on executions while a task force studied the fairness and cost of the death sentence. New Jersey had 10 people on Death Row at the time.[4] On December 10, 2007, the New Jersey Senate passed bill to repeal the current death penalty statute, and replaced it with life imprisonment without parole. On Dec. 13, 2007, the state's General Assembly adopted the same law. Governor Corzine signed the bill into law on December 17, 2007.[5]

This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by expanding it with reliably sourced entries.

A complete list of 15,269 executions in the United States prior to the reintroduction of capital punishment in the 1970s was compiled by M. Watt Espy and John Ortiz Smykla, and was made available through the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research.[8]

See also

References

  1. ↑ http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/documents/ESPYstate.pdf
  2. ↑ http://deathpenaltyusa.org/usa1/state/new_jersey2.htm
  3. ↑ http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/documents/ESPYstate.pdf
  4. ↑ New Jerseyans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (Gdabout)
  5. ↑ New Jersey Senate Bill No. 171
  6. ↑ Weird N.J Volume 23, 2004 pg. 94.
  7. ↑ "New York Times, Nov 11, 1914 Page 5".
  8. ↑ http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/documents/ESPYstate.pdf
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