Veteran New York leg­is­la­tor John R. Dunne vot­ed for the death penal­ty 12 times dur­ing his tenure in the New York Senate. He then went on to serve as an assis­tant attor­ney gen­er­al at the U.S. Department of Justice. But his con­cerns about the fair­ness and accu­ra­cy of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment have now result­ed in his oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty. In an op-ed appear­ing in the New York Daily News, Dunne wrote:

As a mem­ber of the New York Senate from 1966 to 1989, I vot­ed 12 times to estab­lish the death penal­ty in New York. Each time I cast a vote for death, I believed I was doing the right thing. When New York restored the death penal­ty, Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno appoint­ed me to be one of the three orig­i­nal direc­tors of the state’s Capital Defender Office, estab­lished to pro­vide coun­sel for indi­gent defen­dants facing death.

But the last decade taught me that you can­not tin­ker with the death penal­ty. During those years, I watched a steady stream of respect­ed lead­ers change their minds on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, includ­ing judges who had long enforced the death penal­ty. I read the sto­ries of one inno­cent per­son after anoth­er walk­ing off Death Row after being sen­tenced to death for crimes they did not com­mit. These expe­ri­ences brought me into con­tact with some of the thorni­est issues sur­round­ing the death penalty.

It is unfair to ask jurors to choose with cer­tain­ty between life and death, giv­en the stress, pres­sure, media clam­or and con­fu­sion sur­round­ing their weighty deci­sion. We can­not expect our police to pur­sue all rea­son­able lines of inquiry once a sus­pect is ID’d. And pros­e­cu­tors are unable to over­see the police in every case. Judges are nei­ther always free of bias nor intel­lec­tu­al­ly capa­ble in every case. These are the issues that must be addressed.

The Assembly Codes Committee is poised to reject the death penal­ty when it votes this week. Those who have not yet changed their views with the times have demand­ed that the Assembly bring this bill to the floor for a vote by all of its mem­bers. As a leg­is­la­tor for more than 20 years, I can assure you a bill that dies in com­mit­tee has been through a full and appro­pri­ate legislative process. 

The Codes Committee is right to kill the death penal­ty, and the Assembly is right to con­sid­er the mat­ter closed. Their act will leave life impris­on­ment with­out parole as the top pun­ish­ment for first-degree mur­der in New York.

I regret my votes in favor of the death penal­ty. When the Codes Committee insti­tu­tion­al­izes its oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty in a few days, I will be grateful.

(New York Daily News, April 10, 2005). See New Voices, Innocence and New York and the Death Penalty.

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