New York Assembly Committee Blocks Death Penalty By Wider Margin

Members of the New York Assembly’s Codes Committee recent­ly vot­ed 13 – 5 against a bill to rein­state the death penal­ty, a vote that revealed a grow­ing bi-par­ti­san oppo­si­tion to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Last year’s vote on the same mea­sure was 11 – 7. New York’s death penal­ty was over­turned in 2004 by the state’s high­est court. A num­ber of Assembly mem­bers have said they no longer sup­port the death penal­ty because of grow­ing evi­dence that it risks inno­cent lives and because the state now has the alter­na­tive sen­tenc­ing option of life with­out parole, which was not avail­able when New York rein­stat­ed the death penal­ty in 1995.
(Gannett News Service, June 14, 2006). See Recent Legislative Activity.