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.