Become a Crime Scene Investigator: A Former Prisoner on Voting for the First Time in His Life

Friday, October 21, 2016

A Former Prisoner on Voting for the First Time in His Life

“Being able to vote — that’s rare for people like me.”…
To learn more visit: The Marshall Project

New Jersey votes to ban death penalty; 1st state in 42 years

SHOTLIST
1. Various of New Jersey State Prison
2. Set up of inmate Robert O. Marshall sitting down
3. SOUNDBITE: (English) Robert O. Marshall, New Jersey Prison inmate:
“It’s about time that they got rid of it, I’ve written several articles about it, essays about it, it’s a huge waste of money, and doesn’t accomplish anything. Even if it were implemented it doesn’t accomplish anything.”
7. Cutaway of Marshall in chair
8. SOUNDBITE: (English) Robert O. Marshall, New Jersey Prison inmate:
“Killing the one person, the person he killed is still dead, so it doesn’t accomplish anything there either. I don’t believe it psychologically affects people on the street because most murders are, they’re not pre-meditated, they’re in many cases emotional or spur of the moment type things and they don’t stop to think about the consequences.”
9. Various of prison exterior wall
10. SOUNDBITE: (English) Robert O. Marshall, New Jersey inmate:
“You always have that hanging over your head, you know that some day your appeals are going to run out and you’re going to take the long walk.”
11. Cutaway of prison fence
12. Cutaway of prison fence barbed wire
13. SOUNDBITE: (English) Robert O. Marshall, New Jersey inmate:
“For a long time they told me I was the poster boy for the death penalty and I was going to be executed, and you don’t dwell on it, or I didn’t, you know, but there are times that you lie on your bed, you think of your family and the people that you’re going to leave behind, all the hurt, all the pain it’s going to cause.”
14. Marshall leaving room
15. Press conference at New Jersey State Assembly
16. SOUNDBITE: (English) Joseph Roberts Junior, Democrat and Speaker of New Jersey House:
“Today I believe sends a signal to all of America, we are telling states that you can indeed repeal the death penalty. As Sister Helen said when she was here, New Jersey now becomes a beacon on the hill.”
17. State assembly in session
18. Various of lawmakers in state assembly session
STORYLINE:
New Jersey will become the first US state in four decades to abolish the death penalty under a measure lawmakers approved and the governor intends to sign within days.
New Jersey Assembly members voted on Thursday 44-36 to replace the death sentence with life in prison without parole.
The state Senate approved the bill on Monday, and Governor Jon S. Corzine, a Democrat, has said he will sign the bill within a week.
A special state commission found in January that the death penalty was a more expensive sentence than life in prison, did not deter people from committing murder, and carries the risk of executing an innocent person.
A judge spared Robert O. Marshall the death penalty in 2004 after he had spent 18 years on the state’s death row.
Upon hearing Thursday’s agreement to abolish the death penalty, Marshall said it was time the death sentence was abolished.
“It’s about time that they got rid of it,” Marshall said on Thursday, during an exclusive interview with The Associated Press at New Jersey State Prison in Trenton, where he remains incarcerated.
Marshall, an insurance salesman convicted of hiring a hitman to kill his wife in 1984, said the death penalty wasn’t likely to deter even horrific crimes and wasn’t going to bring much solace to the families of the victims.
“Killing the one person, the person he killed is still dead, so it doesn’t accomplish anything there either,” he said.
Politicians, activists and families of murder victims weighed in on both sides of the issue in hearings prior to this week’s votes by both houses of the New Jersey Legislature.
Upon passing the bill, Joseph Roberts Junior, a Democrat and Speaker of the New Jersey House said the new legislation would send a signal to all of America.