The U.S. Attorney for Western New York has filed more potential federal death penalty cases than most of his colleagues across the country. Since taking office in March 2010, William J. Hochul, Jr. has petitioned the Justice Department to seek the death penalty against 24 people, more than his counterparts in cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Miami or cities in Texas. Only two other federal prosecutors, both from more populous districts than Western New York, have filed as many death cases with Attorney General Eric Holder in the past 2 years. None of Hochul's cases has yet resulted in a capital trial, much less a death sentence, but they have cost taxpayers more than $661,000 just in the past year. This expenditure is more than the combined amount spent by the area's four previous U.S. attorneys on death penalty-eligible cases over the previous 11 years. Kevin McNally, who heads the Federal Death Penalty Resource Counsel Project said, "I seriously doubt whether any of [Hochul's] defendants will actually face the death penalty at trial." The Department of Justice spends an estimated $86 million a year on federal death penalty cases. Since the reinstatement of the federal death penalty in 1988, three defendants have been executed. David Kaczynzki, a member of New Yorkers for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, said, "I do not see how even the staunchest supporter of the death penalty could argue that these prosecutions are an efficient use of taxpayer money."
DPIC is pleased to announce the completion of our 
In a recent op-ed in the New York Daily News, former New York Governor Mario Cuomo called the death penalty a "serious moral problem" that is "corrosive" to a democratic citizenry. He said many of the problems of the death penalty--ineffectiveness as a deterrent, unfairness, and the risk of executing the innocent--are inevitable: "These imperfections - as well as the horrible and irreversible injustice they can produce - are inevitable. In this country, a defendant is convicted on proof beyond a reasonable doubt - not proof that can be known with absolute certainty. There's no such thing as absolute certainty in our law." He advocated for alternative punishments for murder, particularly life in prison without the possibility of parole: "There is a punishment that is much better than the death penalty: one that juries will not be reluctant to impose; one that is so menacing to a potential killer, that it could actually deter; one that does not require us to be infallible so as to avoid taking an innocent life; and one that does not require us to stoop to the level of the killers." Cuomo mentioned the execution of Troy Davis as an example of the risks posed by the uncertainties in the system. As governor, Cuomo repeatedly vetoed legislation to restore New York's death penalty. Read full op-ed below.
A new study by Professor Franklin Zimring of the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law provides an in-depth analysis of the factors that influenced the dramatic twenty-year decline of street crime in New York City. According to the study, which was recently discussed in Scientific American, the rate of common crimes such as homicide, robbery and burglary dropped by more than 80 percent in New York City. By 2009, the homicide rate was lower than it was in 1961. Zimring suggests that one of the most influential factors in the reduction of crime rates was the improvement of policing around the city. Beginning in 1990, New York City added over 7,000 new uniformed officers. Along with adding new police to the streets, the city implemented several new strategies that were focused on high-crime settings. One of the tactics was deploying more police officers in crime "hotspots" that were determined by sophisticated data-mapping technology. Zimring concludes, "The steady, significant and cumulatively overwhelming crime decline in New York is proof that cities as we know them need not be incubators of robbery, rape and mayhem." The article also dispels some of the misconceptions about the drop in crime: Zimring states that it was not due to changes in the ethnic makeup of the city, to shifts in illicit drug use, or to an increased use of incarceration.
A recent article by Terrence P. Dwyer (pictured), retired New York State Police Investigator, and George F. Kain, a police commissioner in Ridgefield, Connecticut, dismissed the notion that the death penalty is needed to protect law enforcement officers. Dwyer and Kain wrote that a majority of police chiefs believe that the death penalty does not deter violent crime and rank the death penalty last in a list of effective tools for fighting crime. "In states like New York, which abolished its death penalty in 2004, or North Carolina, where there has been a de facto moratorium since 2006, the numbers indicate no statistical increase in police officer homicides after the death penalty was repealed or rendered moot through moratorium," the authors wrote. They also encouraged lawmakers to weigh the substantial costs of the death penalty in their decision-making. They stated, "The Connecticut death penalty costs $4 million annually, according to a 2009 estimate by the General Assembly's non-partisan Office of Fiscal Analysis. While capital cases in Connecticut account for just .06 % of cases in the Public Defender's office, the cost to defend these cases was nearly $3.5 million, over 7 % of the office's entire budget."