April 13
NEW YORK:
New York Assembly Democrats Close Off Death Penalty for 2005
Democrats in the State Assembly closed the door Tuesday on reviving the
death penalty in New York State this year, handing a significant victory
to opponents of capital punishment who are trying to build national
momentum.
Barring a long-shot procedural maneuver by Assembly Republicans, the
state's death penalty law now appears likely to stay off the books for
some years to come. New York's top court struck down the law in June,
finding a central element of its sentencing provisions unconstitutional,
and Democratic resistance is unlikely to change soon because of entrenched
incumbency in Albany.
New York now joins a handful of states where politicians have stepped away
from death penalty laws that their predecessors passed after the United
States Supreme Court restored capital punishment in 1976. Thirty-eight
states have enacted capital punishment since then, the most recent being
New York in 1995, although no one was executed under the law.
"This is a historic step by New York, which is the 1st state in a long,
long time to scrutinize the death penalty with public hearings, debate it,
and then essentially reject it," said Richard Dieter, executive director
of Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit group that has been
critical of capital punishment in practice.
Opponents from around the nation helped pack a Capitol hearing room on
Tuesday to mark the vote by a powerful Assembly committee that effectively
killed the legislation. Afterward, they hailed it as a signal moment in
the legal and political battles around the issue, noting that some
lawmakers who voted for the 1995 law had now changed their minds, citing
fairness and fallibility, a shift they hope to encourage elsewhere.
"There is going to be a ripple effect coming out of Albany against capital
punishment, no question," said Shari Silberstein, who attended the
hearings and is codirector of the Quixote Center, a group that describes
itself as faith-based and is pressing for moratoriums on executions. "When
a major state like New York moves away from the death penalty, other
states take notice and ask questions of their own."
The defeat at Democrats' hands could also inject an uncertain political
element into the 2006 races for governor and the Legislature in New York.
George E. Pataki proved the emotional appeal of the death penalty in 1994
when he beat Gov. Mario M. Cuomo in part by promising voters that he,
unlike Mr. Cuomo, would sign a capital punishment law.
Mr. Pataki, a Republican who plans to disclose by summer if he will seek a
4th term, said on Tuesday that it was "outrageous" for Democrats to derail
the death penalty in a committee. "The Assembly leadership's 'so what'
attitude toward criminals, whether they're sex offenders, deadly drivers,
or heinous murderers, is simply shameful," Mr. Pataki said.
The leader of the Assembly Republicans, Charles H. Nesbitt, said the fight
was not over, suggesting that the Republican Party might try to attach a
death penalty amendment to an unrelated bill in hopes of forcing a floor
vote. While Republicans predicted tough going, they also said they could
threaten to use the issue as an election-year wedge.
The likely Democratic nominee for governor, Attorney General Eliot
Spitzer, also supports the death penalty, but it is unclear whether he
would be drawn into a showdown on the issue. Darren Dopp, a spokesman for
Mr. Spitzer, said yesterday that the attorney general would not comment.
Lawmakers in Connecticut, Nebraska and New Mexico have tried to overhaul
or repeal their death penalty laws in recent years, but none have gone as
far as the Assembly in effectively consigning the law to limbo for the
time being. A moratorium is in place in Illinois, and a lawsuit aimed at
the Kansas law is in the courts.
The Assembly's action on Tuesday came at a half-hour meeting of the Codes
Committee, which voted 11 to 7 against allowing a full Assembly vote on a
bill to adjust the death penalty law and satisfy the constitutional
objections of the State Court of Appeals. The State Senate approved a
virtually identical bill in March by a vote of 37 to 22, and Mr. Pataki
had pledged to sign the legislation.
The 11 nays came from Democrats; the committee's 4 Republicans and 3 other
Democrats voted to send the bill to the floor of the Assembly, where it
was likely to have faced a close vote.
"The death penalty is, in effect, killed for this year," said Assemblyman
Joseph R. Lentol, a Brooklyn Democrat who is chairman of the committee.
A fiery, 20-minute debate among committee members preceded the vote,
although its brevity contrasted with the 40 hours of emotional testimony
at 5 public hearings held by the committee and two other panels this
winter. Assemblyman Mark Weprin, a Queens Democrat, said he could not
support the death penalty when he believed that there were innocent people
on death row.
"I just don't know how you explain that to a mother whose child is
completely innocent and who is murdered by the state for something they
didn't do," Mr. Weprin said.
That remark drew a measure of scorn from a Republican on the committee,
David R. Townsend Jr., who implored the panel to permit all Assembly
members to have a chance to vote.
"I would say to you, Mark, and everybody here, what do we say to the
innocent wife, mother, son, daughter, husband of the innocent police
office, the innocent firefighter, the innocent corrections officer, the
innocent parole officer, the innocent E.M.S. person, whose had their life
needlessly taken in a homicide?" Mr. Townsend said.
Mr. Lentol, mindful that the Legislature once regularly sent death penalty
bills to Mr. Cuomo only to see them vetoed, assured his colleagues that
the debate was sure to continue.
"The nature of politics being what it is, it will be brought up again and
again for years to come," Mr. Lentol said.
(source: New York Times)
