Judicial obsession with death in New Jersey

Continuing the New Jersey sentencing news, the NJ Supreme Court today released a massive opinion upholding a death sentence in New Jersey v. Wakefield, No. A-37-2004 (NJ May 7, 2007) (available here).  The majority opinion in Wakefield runs 176 pages(!), and there is an interesting concurrence and two dissents adding another 60 pages of Garden State capital sentencing insights.

I suppose I should commend the Justices of the NJ Supreme Court for their commitment to careful justice.  But I cannot help but notice that it took the state Justices more than 18 months to churn out Wakefield, and I suspect plenty of other cases (both criminal and civil) would have benefited from some of time the Justices devoted to considering the claims of doubler murderer Brian Wakefield.  But then again, I also know that plenty of other projects would have benefited from the quarter of a billion dollars(!) that New Jersey has spent on its death penalty system without having actually executed anyone over the last 25 years.