By Daniel Beckelman 

One of the most difficult issues to come before any political leader would be deciding whether to support or oppose capital punishment. Is the fear of convicting the wrong man or the idea that the state should not kill greater than the harm to the victims’ families that may be done by letting a capital offender live. This indeed is the issue some local legislators have and are grappling with as New Jersey is likely to become the first state in forty years to abolish the death penalty.  Indeed, legislators representing Bergen County played important roles on both sides of the debate.

Senator Gerald Cardinale, often the most vocal traditional conservative in the State Senate, was forceful in his defense of the death penalty as a deterrent. (See Cardinale’s opinion piece submitted last week to Inside Bergen.)

While not as loud in his defense as Cardinale, Nicholas Sacco, a North Bergen Democrat whose district includes Fairview in Bergen County, also voted to retain the death penalty in yesterday’s 21-16 vote for abolition. Sacco was only one of three Democrats to vote to retain capital punishment, with Nicholas Scutari of Linden and Fred Madden of Camden County being the others. Several down-state Republicans voted with Democrats to repeal the state’s 25-year old capital punishment law. 

Sacco’s decision was a tough one, said the Senator’s spokesman Paul Swibinski. “Senator Sacco sponsored legislation requiring DNA testing for crimes, and he weighed this decision heavily. While the Senator has concerns about the death penalty and how it may be implemented, he also believed it was better to retain having a law on the books.”

Swibinski did not see constituent reaction in the heavily Democratic 32nd District being significantly for or against the death penalty. “Senator Sacco is popular in the district, and normally does face competitive primaries,” Swibinski said. In the 2007  primary which was a spillover of Democratic rivalries for other offices in Hudson County Sacco beat Jersey City police officer Sean Connors 85%-15%, and defeated Republican John Pluchino 83%-17%. The Republicans have only won in the 32nd once, winning two Assembly seats for one-term with the 1985 Kean re-election landslide.

Traveling west on Route 3 to the politically-competitive 36th District, the two Democratic incumbents, Gary Schaer of Passaic Park and Fred Scalera of Nutley, are both sponsors of A-795, the bill in the Assembly sponsoring the death penalty abolition. Schaer’s Chief of Staff, Andrew Schwab, stated that his boss is voting strictly on belief, “Assemblyman Schaer believes that the state should not decide who lives and who dies” Schwab said.  Schaer’s running-mate, Scalera, also stated opposition in belief but also the costs of maintaining the death penalty. “We are spending millions on appeals, and with my legislation, these criminals will serve real life sentences,” Scalera said.

Scalera and Schaer take some political risk in taking an abolition stand. Polls show mixed opinions on the issue, and while all current legislators from the 36th are Democrats, President Bush ran strongly in much of the district in 2004 and Republicans still managed 45% of the total vote in 2007 running an under-funded race. Scalera also ran 1,000 votes ahead of Schaer, a testament to his personal popularity in Nutley. Despite the districts’ moderate leanings, both Scalera and Schaer said most of the constituent correspondence had been to abolish the death penalty. Scalera attributed some of the support for abolition to the overwhelmingly Catholic population in the district and the church’s opposition to capital punishment.

Another legislator, who will be getting a promotion next month, Assemblyman and Senator-elect Bob Gordon of Fair Lawn, is also planning to vote to abolish the death penalty. Mauro Raguseo, Gordon’s chief of staff, said that the Assemblyman has long been against the death penalty and also believed, like Scalera, that the costs of appeals were too much and that life without parole was a more sensible option. Like in the 36th, most constituents who wrote Gordon supported abolition. 

In the Republican 40th District, Assemblyman and Senator-elect Kevin O’Toole of Cedar Grove signaled he would support the death penalty being retained, while staffers for Assemblyman David Russo of Ridgewood remained un-committed. Senator Hank McNamara among the county delegation voted with Cardinale and Sacco to retain the death penalty.

While Senator Loretta Weinberg voted to abolish the death penalty, the entire District 37 legislative team stand alone in consistently refusing to return calls from Inside Bergen on any issue.