NYT: 4-3 (state ct.) Ruling Effectively Halts Death Penalty in NY

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A 4-3 Ruling Effectively Halts Death Penalty in New York
By WILLIAM GLABERSON

Published: June 25, 2004


New York State's highest court ruled yesterday that a central provision of the state's capital punishment law violated the State Constitution. Lawyers said the ruling would probably spare the lives of the four men now on death row and effectively suspend the death penalty in New York.

The 4-to-3 ruling from the State Court of Appeals in Albany went well beyond the particulars of a single case, giving opponents of the law an important victory. Besides the four death-row inmates, lawyers said, it could spare the lives of nine defendants fighting capital cases and more than 30 others whose murder cases are in early stages. Because the case was decided on state constitutional grounds, it is also expected to provide a broad new legal foundation for untold future challenges to the state's death penalty.

The ruling left the capital punishment law itself intact, providing that the Legislature repairs the provision that the court said was flawed. But the court's majority said, "Under the present statute, the death penalty may not be imposed."

No one has been executed under the law, which was passed in 1995 with the fervent support of Gov. George E. Pataki. Some juries have resisted imposing capital punishment and some district attorneys have declined to seek it at trial. The last execution in New York, under a previous death penalty law, was in 1963....


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/25/nyregion/25DEAT.html