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There once was a time when death was a real big winner in New York.

This period began in the 1970s as crime in the city and the suburbs began shooting up. Murder rates were climbing. The drug business was getting rougher and moving into nicer neighborhoods.

Add some pandering politicians to the mix and some screaming tabloid headlines. Before you knew it, the easy-answer crowd had an easy answer for all this crime: Let's kill the criminals.

Never mind that the death penalty has always been useless at reducing crime. It sounded marvelous in a TV sound bite or a legislative hearing room. And by the middle 1980s, only a very brave New York politician - or one with his own political death wish - would dare to stand between a nervous public and the so-called "ultimate punishment."

If you doubt this, go ask Mario Cuomo.

A principled death-penalty opponent who vetoed every capital-punishment bill that crossed his desk, Cuomo paid the ultimate electoral price in 1994. He was beaten by the fervently pro-death Gov. George Pataki, who promptly gave New Yorkers a new death-penalty law.

Of course, no one has ever been killed under New York's current death-penalty law. The state's last execution was 1963, under an earlier law that was found unconstitutional. And no one will be killed any time soon.

On June 24 of this year, the state's highest court ruled that New York's latest death penalty is also legally flawed. "Under the present statute, the death penalty may not be imposed," the judges said.

Which is where things stand today.

So why are we suddenly talking about the death penalty again?

No, it isn't just the California jury that voted on Monday to put Scott Peterson to death. Republicans in the New York Legislature, with Pataki's support, have introduced a bill to put capital punishment back into law.

At 10 o'clock this morning on West 44th Street, in a meeting hall at the Bar Association of the City of New York, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver will hold a rare public hearing on whether the state should be in the death business again.

A big crowd is expected today. But just before the hearing begins, people from 300 religious groups, unions, activist organizations and others will announce a giant coalition to keep the death penalty off the books in New York. Standing at the front of this group is Andrew Cuomo, Mario's son.

The issue is the same it has always been. But suddenly, the ground is not.

"I remember when my father first ran," said the younger Cuomo, who was federal housing secretary and made a brief run for governor two years ago. "The only thing people knew the governor of New York did was he passed the death penalty. The only thing they knew about my father is that he was against the death penalty, and they were for it."

But something has obviously changed in the past 10 years on the politics of death.

"Crime is down," Cuomo said. "The discussion is more sober. People are in a different place. I'm not sure it was the death penalty that people really wanted before. It was their way to say, 'I'm afraid of crime. I'm afraid for my family and not enough is being done.' It is their way of saying, 'I am so scared and angry, I'll go to the extreme.

"People understand now we can accomplish the same thing by mandatory life in prison without parole. We can keep people off the street forever so they'll never be in a position to hurt anyone ever again."

It sounded almost reassuring to hear Andrew Cuomo talk yesterday. A Cuomo fighting the death penalty in New York. But here was the switch: It might actually help him politically.

This coalition is assembling facts and figures and honing the argument.

The 117 people wrongly put to death since 1973. The development of DNA. The death-penalty moratoriums in Illinois and New Jersey. The inevitable possibility of mistakes.

It isn't just the Republicans who have God on their side. The religious here are especially striking. And all of them think the state shouldn't be killing people.

Many of the state's top Democrats - Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, Eliot Spitzer, Speaker Silver - have all come out in recent years for some version of a death penalty. But these hearings could easily push them the other way.

"It is unimaginable to me that this governor and this Legislature will want to be known for having this one accomplishment," Andrew Cuomo said - "giving death to New York State. That would be the cruelest irony. They can't reform education. They can't reform the tax code. They can't bring jobs back upstate. The only thing they can do is bring back death? I don't believe they'll do it."