After a vote by the New Jersey General Assembly yesterday, all it will take is a stroke of Governor Jon Corzine's pen to make it official: The Garden State will have abolished the death penalty.

The New Jersey Death Penalty Study Commission, formed last year, released a report in January of 2007 that found it costs the state more money to execute a prisoner than imprisoning the inmate for life. "New Jersey is the first state that realized that ending the death penalty is not about freeing criminals from responsibility, it is about freeing the state from a costly program which does not administer justice," said Christopher Hill, State Strategies Coordinator for the ACLU's Capital Punishment Project.

Gov. Corzine has said he will sign the bill inside a week. He told the Associated Press: "This is an issue of conscience and the responsible administration of justice."

We couldn't agree more.

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