New York's death penalty
Did you know?
There are compelling concerns about unfairness and wastefulness in New York's death penalty. The Court of Appeals gave New Yorkers an unprecedented opportunity to look at our state's 10-year death penalty experiment and decide whether we really want it back. Consider the facts:
Executing the innocent
- Since 1973, at least 116 death row inmates have been released after evidence proved they were innocent.
- Bobby McLaughlin, an innocent man convicted of murder in New York and sentenced to life in prison, put it most powerfully when he said: "If there was a death penalty in New York [when I was convicted], I would now be ashes in an urn in my parents' living room."
- Commissions in both Illinois and Massachusetts studied the death penalty and made dozens of recommendations to reduce the risk of executing the innocent. The Illinois Commission added that even if all 85 of its recommendations were put in place, the risk would not be eliminated completely. Yet New York's death penalty law lacks many of these recommended reforms.
Racial and geographic bias
- In New York, those accused of murdering white victims are more than twice as likely to face the death penalty as those who murder black victims, according to a recent study by the Center for Law and Justice in Albany.
- Six counties account for the majority of the cases where the death penalty has been sought.
New Yorkers prefer life without the possibility of parole
- Most New Yorkers (53%) prefer life without parole to the death penalty. Only 38% prefer the death penalty. Among registered Democrats in New York, only 25 percent prefer the death penalty. (March 2003 Quinnipiac University poll.)
- When New York's death penalty statute was enacted, our state did not have a sentence of life without the possibility of parole on the books. Now that this option available, the death penalty is not needed to keep those convicted of murder off the streets for good.
- Hundreds of organizations across New York have called for a moratorium on executions while the system's many flaws are examined. The "quick fix" passed by the Senate does nothing to address these death penalty's flaws.
Expensive and inefficient
- Since New York reinstated the death penalty in 1995, New York taxpayers have spent at least $170 million pursuing capital cases without a single execution taking place.
- Most state studies have found that a system of life without parole is significantly cheaper than the death penalty system, even when including the costs of long-term imprisonment. The death penalty's cost diverts resources from other areas, including crime prevention and help for victims.
- Yet the death penalty is not a deterrent. In Rochester, for example, where prosecutors have sought the death penalty a number of times, the crime rate has gone up, while the crime rate in Manhattan, where the death penalty has never been sought, has dramatically declined.
Where things stand
The Court of Appeals overturned New York's death penalty in June. But the Assembly could vote to bring it back anytime. If they bring it back without considering all of the evidence, another $170 million and another 10 years will go by, only to have the Courts throw out the statute again or to find that dozens of innocent people have been sentenced to die. Wouldn't New York's resources be better spent preventing crime and serving the needs of victims with real assistance?
(Cited from: http://www.nyadp.org/main/nyfaq.html)
