death penalty news
April 14, 2005
NEW YORK:
New York's Death Penalty Dies
The Assembly Codes Committee killed the state's death penalty Tuesday,
April 12, voting 11-7 against legislation that would have addressed a
sentencing provision of the death penalty law which caused the Court of
Appeals to strike down the law last year as being unconstitutional.
Republicans had repeatedly asked that the bill be allowed on the floor
for debate and vote by the full 150-member chamber but the Democratic-led
committee killed the bill in committee.
Gov. George Pataki called the vote "outrageous" and said that "the
Assembly leadership is denying its own members the ability to put a strong
and sensible capital punishment law back on the books".
It was Pataki's support of the death penalty in his 1994 campaign which
helped him defeat former Gov. Mario Cuomo.
Last June, by a ruling of four to three, the state's highest court had
placed a moratorium on the death penalty law because of a provision in the
statute that was ruled unconstitutional. The provision, which violates the
state's Constitution's guarantee to due process, required judges to tell
jurors that if, in determining sentencing, they became deadlocked, the
judge would impose a sentence that would leave the defendant eligible for
parole after 20 to 25 years. This instruction risked coercing jurors to
vote for execution to prevent the possibility of defendants from ever being
released.
The death penalty was reinstated in New York after Pataki defeated
Cuomo. No one was ever executed under the 1995 death penalty law.
Support for the death penalty has diminished in recent years. The
latest polls show that only 34% of New Yorkers support the death penalty,
compared with 47% who supported it in 1994.
(source: Empire Journal)
