New York

Sayfullo Saipov (pic­tured) was found guilty in fed­er­al court on January 26, 2023 of killing eight peo­ple on a New York City bike path in 2017 by dri­ving a truck into a crowd of peo­ple. He will now like­ly be the first per­son to face a fed­er­al cap­i­tal penal­ty hear­ing dur­ing President Biden’s admin­is­tra­tion. On February 6, 2023, a jury in Manhattan will begin hear­ing evi­dence to deter­mine whether Saipov will be sen­tenced to death or life with­out parole. The jury must vote unan­i­mous­ly for a death sen­tence to result.

As fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors con­sid­er what pun­ish­ment to seek against the accused gun­man in the May 2022 mass shoot­ing at a Tops Supermarket in Buffalo, sur­vivors and fam­i­ly mem­bers of vic­tims of the shoot­ing are con­cerned that pur­su­ing the death penal­ty will fur­ther spread the racial hatred that fueled the mas­sacre and divert atten­tion from mean­ing­ful action to com­bat white suprema­cist violence.

A New York City judge has released three men from prison after 24 years impris­on­ment for mur­der, find­ing that a high-rank­ing pros­e­cu­tor in the Queens County District Attorney’s office delib­er­ate­ly con­cealed excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence while pur­su­ing the death penal­ty against a teenage defendant.

Defense attor­neys for Sayfullo Saipov (pic­tured), the man accused of killing eight peo­ple by dri­ving a truck onto a Manhattan bike path on October 31, 2017, have asked a New York fed­er­al dis­trict court to bar the U.S. gov­ern­ment from seek­ing the death penal­ty against Saipov. Arguing that President Donald Trump has uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly inject­ed ​“naked­ly polit­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions” into the Department of Justice’s charg­ing deci­sion, Saipov’s lawyers on September 6, 2018, filed a motion before Judge Vincent Broderick to pre­clude fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors from pur­su­ing the death penal­ty or, alter­na­tive­ly, ​“to appoint…

States that have recent­ly abol­ished the death penal­ty have not expe­ri­enced the ​“parade of hor­ri­bles” — includ­ing increased mur­der rates — pre­dict­ed by death-penal­ty pro­po­nents, accord­ing to death-penal­ty experts who par­tic­i­pat­ed in a pan­el dis­cus­sion at the 2017 American Bar Association nation­al meet­ing in New York City. Instead, the pan­elists said, abo­li­tion appears to have cre­at­ed oppor­tu­ni­ties to move for­ward with oth­er broad­er crim­i­nal jus­tice reforms.

This week, two decades-old cas­es involv­ing men with inno­cence claims reached final res­o­lu­tion: Louisiana inmate Gary Tyler (pic­tured) was released after 42 years in prison and Paul Gatling was exon­er­at­ed in New York more than 50 years after his wrong­ful con­vic­tion. Both men had once faced the death penal­ty. Tyler was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death for the fatal shoot­ing of a 13-year-old white boy in 1974 dur­ing a riot over school inte­gra­tion. A white mob had attacked a bus filled with black stu­dents, includ­ing Tyler. After the shoot­ing, Tyler…

United States District Court Judge Nicholas Garaufis (pic­tured) ruled on March 15 that fed­er­al death row inmate Ronell Wilson is inel­i­gi­ble for the death penal­ty because he has intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Atkins v. Virginia that the death penal­ty con­sti­tut­ed cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment when applied to peo­ple diag­nosed with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty, then known as men­tal retar­da­tion. Wilson was first sen­tenced to death in New York fed­er­al dis­trict court in 2007, but his death sen­tence was over­turned because of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct. Before his second…

On July 24, Ronell Wilson was re-sen­tenced to death by a fed­er­al jury in New York. Despite numer­ous cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tions by the Department of Justice, no oth­er per­son in the state has been giv­en the death penal­ty since the fed­er­al death penal­ty was rein­stat­ed in 1988. New York’s state death penal­ty law was found uncon­sti­tu­tion­al by the state Court of Appeals in 2004. By 2007, all sev­en of those sen­tenced to death under the state law had their sen­tences over­turned. Wilson was first sen­tenced to death in 2007 for the…

George F. Will, con­ser­v­a­tive com­men­ta­tor of the Washington Post, recent­ly drew a les­son about the death penal­ty from the doc­u­men­tary The Central Park Five, which airs on PBS on Tuesday, April 16. Will wrote, “[T]his recount­ing of a mul­ti­fac­eted but, for­tu­nate­ly, not fatal fail­ure of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem but­tress­es the con­ser­v­a­tive case against the death penal­ty: Its final­i­ty leaves no room for rec­ti­fy­ing mis­takes.” The Central Park Five tells the sto­ry of five juve­nile defen­dants (four African Americans and one Hispanic) who were con­vict­ed of the 1989 rape and…

Former Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau has joined two oth­er for­mer pros­e­cu­tors in fil­ing an ami­cus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of William Kuenzel, an Alabama death row inmate sen­tenced to death in 1988. New evi­dence emerged in 2010 rais­ing doubts about his guilt. According to Morgenthau’s brief, two wit­ness­es who tes­ti­fied against Kuenzel gave entire­ly dif­fer­ent accounts that did not iden­ti­fy him when they first met with author­i­ties. One of the wit­ness­es admit­ted being involved in the mur­der. Morgenthau, who retired from the D.A.‘s office…