A recent Albany Times Union edi­to­r­i­al called on state leg­is­la­tors to aban­don attempts to rein­state New York’s death penal­ty, which the state’s high­est court found uncon­sti­tu­tion­al because the statute’s jury instruc­tions could be coer­cive. The June 24th New York Court of Appeals rul­ing in People v. Stephen LaValle spurred pro­posed leg­is­la­tion to rem­e­dy the statute. Some legal crit­ics who have exam­ined the new bill say that it may also be uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. The edi­to­r­i­al echoed this sen­ti­ment, not­ing:


​“The won­der is that it took the Court of Appeals nine years to strike down a death penal­ty law that was writ­ten that way… The cost of pros­e­cut­ing cap­i­tal crimes dur­ing those nine years is esti­mat­ed to be in the range of $170 mil­lion.
…


​“The Senate death penal­ty bill, spon­sored by Dale Volker, a Republican from sub­ur­ban Buffalo, would again legal­ize (cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment) — even retroac­tive­ly, to peo­ple con­vict­ed under a law since deemed uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. Surely he knows that laws applied after the fact are equal­ly uncon­sti­tu­tion­al.

​“The sys­tem works already. The most severe pun­ish­ment per­mis­si­ble, for the worst crimes imag­in­able, is humane nonethe­less.

​“Legislators so eager to replace one moral­ly trou­ble­some and con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly sus­pect death penal­ty law with anoth­er ought to think about aban­don­ing their cause, in the name of jus­tice of all things.”

(Albany Times Union, August 12, 2004) See DPIC’s Summay of People v. Stephen LaValle. Read DPIC’s Press Release about the pro­posed New York bill. See also, Editorials.

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