New York’s death penalty fight isn’t over yet
Twenty years ago, the New York Court of Appeals ruled in People v. LaValle that the sentencing provisions of the state’s 1995 death penalty statute violated the state constitution, thereby invalidating New York’s capital punishment law. Although now a literal dead letter, the 1995 law survives on the pages of the statute books. And bills are currently pending in the state Legislature (A03096/ S01271, A03481) that would both expand the reach of the now moribund death-penalty law and attempt to correct its constitutional infirmity.
While the bills have garnered little support, as long as the vestigial law lingers on the books, a future Legislature could be enticed to enact a quick fix of the flawed sentencing provision and return capital punishment to the state.
The defunct 1995 law reflects a decades-old legislative judgment that capital punishment is a justifiable response to murder. Along with the moral and ethical concerns that the death penalty raises comes a litany of well-known administrative problems — not least of which is the risk that innocents will be executed. Other flaws that accompany the use of the death penalty are racial discrimination, arbitrary application and exorbitant fiscal cost.
People v. LaValle dealt with the fact that jurors in firstdegree murder cases had been given two sentencing options under the statute: death or life imprisonment without parole. But there was a catch: The jurors were instructed that if they failed to come to unanimous agreement on either of those choices, the judge would sentence the offender to 20 to 25 years to life in prison.
As the Court of Appeals observed in 2004, because of this dubious “deadlock provision,” jurors could be induced to “impose the death penalty on a defendant whom they believed did not deserve it simply because they fear that the defendant … may be paroled in 20 years.”
Delaware’s recent experience with capital punishment has resembled New York’s. In 2016, the Delaware Supreme Court ruled the state’s death penalty law unconstitutional because it gave judges fact-finding authority in sentencing decisions that properly belonged to jurors. The invalidated statute was not formally repealed, and some legislators have advocated rectifying the sentencing problem and resuscitating the statute. To forestall such efforts, other legislators have introduced bills, now pending, to
explicitly repeal the unconstitutional legislation.
New York lawmakers should initiate measures modeled after those seeking legislative repeal in Delaware. They should remove the 1995 death penalty law from New York’s penal code. At least one such bill has been submitted (A02111/S04098), although it would also eliminate life imprisonment without parole.
Formally repealing the 1995 death-penalty statute would be decisive affirmation that punishment by death is inconsistent with New York law and its citizens’ values.
Still, even today, New York is not entirely free of the death penalty. The U.S. Department of Justice is seeking Payton Gendron’s execution after charging him under federal law with carrying out a racially motivated shooting spree in Buffalo that claimed the lives of 10 Black people. These horrific crimes unquestionably demand condemnation and harsh punishment. But Gendron already has been sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison with no possibility of parole after pleading guilty to the murders in a New York state court.
What more will be gained if the federal government succeeds in punishing Gendron with death? His sentence under state law ensures that he will die in prison. There is no danger that he will be released to commit additional crimes. The threat of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole should suffice to deter other prospective murderers from committing similar crimes — some of whom might, in their delusional thinking, seek martyrdom by dying at the hands of the state.
The only remaining justification for Gendron’s capital punishment is retribution — that by taking the lives of innocent others, he has forfeited his own right to life and deserves to die. The retributive impulse is a powerful emotional force. But if Gendron is executed, he will die by operation of a legal system that by design is dispassionate, and pursuant to a law that is administered in all of our names.
Having renounced capital punishment, New York no longer puts murderers like Gendron to death in the name of the people of this state. Many New Yorkers — not all, certainly, but a great many — look forward to the day when no executions, even if sanctioned by federal law, are carried out in their name.