TICKET SCALPERS WILL BE DISAPPOINTED: Like most of you, I imagine, I was glad to see that Rabbi Fred Neulander was convicted yesterday on all counts in the murder-for-hire of his wife eight years ago. The penalty phase begins today; the prosecutors are seeking the death penalty, and Neulander will testify. (He did not testify at the trial this time.)
I'm opposed to the death penalty, for moral reasons we don't need to get into here, but I surely agree that if we're going to put ourselves up on a pedestal and decide who deserves to die, then Rabbi Neulander is somewhere high on the list for his calculated plotting to do evil.
That said, don't get your hopes up that he'll ever be executed. Since New Jersey reinstated the death penalty 20 years ago, no prisoner has been executed. The last execution was in 1963.
Moreover, he'd have a long line of people ahead of him to the chamber, including, among others, Robert Marshall, the "Blind Faith" murderer (also, coincidentally, a murder-for-hire by a philandering middle-aged white man) and Jesse Timmendequas, the convicted sex offender who killed seven-year-old Megan Kanka (and inspiring "Megan's Laws" in fifty states).
Even if the death penalty is the sentence, it'll never be imposed. Fred Neulander will die in prison of natural causes, with no congregation, no pulpit, no lovers, no admirers, only himself, his conscience and a cold, hard bed.
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