Capital punishment has not been a penalty under state law in the State ofNew York since 2004 after theNew York Court of Appeals declared that the statute as written was not valid under the state'sconstitution.[1] However, certain federal crimes are subject to thefederal death penalty, even if the crimes occur in New York.[2][3][4]
In 1972, theU.S. Supreme Court's ruling inFurman v. Georgia declared existing capital punishment statutes unconstitutional, abolishing the practice of capital punishment in the United States. In 1976, the same court's ruling inGregg v. Georgia allowed states to reinstate the death penalty. In 1995,GovernorGeorge Pataki signed a new statute into law which returned the death penalty in New York by authorizinglethal injection forexecution.
Prior toFurman v. Georgia, New York was the first state to adopt theelectric chair as a method of execution, which replacedhanging. The last New York execution during that time had occurred in 1963, whenEddie Lee Mays was electrocuted atSing Sing prison. There were no executions in New York after the reinstatement of the death penalty[5] before it was abolished again on June 24, 2004, when the state'shighest court ruled inPeople v. LaValle that the state's death penalty statute violated thestate constitution.[6] New York has had no valid statute relating to capital punishment since then.
Subsequent legislative attempts at fixing or replacing the statute have failed,[7] and in July 2008 GovernorDavid Paterson issued an executive order closing New York'sexecution chamber.[3]
During various periods from the 1600s onward, New York law prescribed the death penalty for crimes such assodomy,adultery,counterfeiting,perjury, and attempted rape or murder by slaves.[8] In 1796, New York abolished the death penalty for crimes other thanmurder andtreason, butarson was made a capital crime in 1808.[8]
In 1860, theNew York Legislature passed a bill which effectively, though unintentionally, abolished capital punishment in the state, by repealinghanging as a method of execution without prescribing an alternative method. The bill was signed by GovernorEdwin D. Morgan in April 1860. TheNew York Court of Appeals ruled the statute unconstitutional, in part, as anex post facto law. Governor Morgan signed legislation to restore capital punishment in 1861, and again in 1862 to fully repeal the earlier statute.[9]
In 1886, newly elected New York State governorDavid B. Hill set up a three-member "New York Commission" to determine a new, more humane system of execution to replace hanging. The commission included the human rights advocate and reformerElbridge Thomas Gerry, New York lawyer and politicianMatthew Hale, andBuffalo dentist and experimenterAlfred P. Southwick.[10] Southwick had been developing an idea since the early 1880s of using electric current as a means of capital punishment after hearing about how relatively painlessly and quickly a drunken man died due to grabbing the energized parts on a generator. Southwick had published this proposal first in 1882 and, being a dentist accustomed to performing procedures on subjects in chairs, used the form of a chair in his designs, which became known as the "electric chair".[11] The commission reviewed ancient and modern forms of execution includinglethal injection but finally settled on electrocution in 1888. A bill making electrocution New York State's form of execution passed the legislature and was signed by Governor Hill on June 4, 1888, set to go into effect on January 1, 1889.
The first individual to be executed in the electric chair wasWilliam Kemmler, on August 6, 1890. Current was passed through Kemmler for 17 seconds and he was declared dead, but witnesses noticed he was still breathing, and the current was turned back on. From start to finish, the execution took eight minutes. During the execution, blood vessels under the skin ruptured and bled, and some witness reported that Kemmler's body caught fire.
From 1890 to 1963, 695 people were executed in New York. The first wasWilliam Kemmler on August 6, 1890, and the last wasEddie Lee Mays on August 15, 1963. Kemmler was the first person in the world known to be executed in an electric chair. Except for four individuals, all of the people executed during this period were convicted of murder. The four exceptions were Joseph Sacoda and Demetrius Gula, who were convicted of kidnapping and executed January 11, 1940, andJulius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were convicted ofespionage and executed June 19, 1953 in Sing Sing by thefederal government, not the state of New York.[12]
In 1937, New York gave the jury the option of recommending mercy in felony first degree murder cases. If the jury recommended mercy, the judge was granted the discretion to sentence the defendant to life in prison. In 1963, New York passed legislation that restricted the use of capital punishment. The statute ended mandatory death sentences for first degree murder, made the jury's sentencing recommendations binding on the court, prohibited death sentences for defendants under 18, and allowed judges to dismiss juries and sentence defendants to life in prison if mitigating circumstances were found.[13]
In 1872 and 1873,Erie County SheriffGrover Cleveland carried out himself two executions by hanging to avoid paying someone else as executioner.[14][15][16] Grover Cleveland was later electedPresident of the United States, serving two non-consecutive terms from 1885 to 1889 and from 1893 to 1897.
In 1901,Leon Czolgosz was electrocuted under state law for theassassination of U.S. PresidentWilliam McKinley. Only after John Kennedy's death in 1963 was it made a federal crime to murder the President of the United States.
Ruth Snyder was one of the very few women executed at Sing Sing. She was put to death in the electric chair in 1928 for the murder of her husband. Infamously, one of the previously selected execution witnesses,Chicago Tribune photographerTom Howard, smuggled a small camera into the execution chamber and managed to take a photo of Snyder after the executioner pulled the switch; it was the first known photograph of an electric chair execution, and it remains one of the few known photographs of such.
A lesser known but contemporaneously notorious case dates to January 1936, whenserial killerAlbert Fish was put to death for the cannibal murder of 10-year-old Grace Budd. He was confirmed to have committed at least three murders, but he is suspected of being involved in nine and, prior to his execution, he claimed to have murdered over 100 people. At age 65, Fish was one of the oldest people ever executed at Sing Sing, tied with Michael Rossi, a 65-year-old man who was executed in Sing Sing's electric chair on June 29, 1922. The oldest person to be executed in any New York electric chair was Charles Bonier, who was 75 when he died in Auburn's electric chair on July 31, 1907.
Other notable cases are those of seven members of Mafia hit squadMurder, Inc. between 1941 and 1944, includingLouis "Lepke" Buchalter, the only mob boss to ever receive the death penalty after being convicted of murder, and some of his associates, includingEmanuel "Mendy" Weiss andLouis Capone, who were executed on March 4, 1944, the same night as Buchalter.
Another notable case was that of the "Lonely Hearts Killers"Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck, who were convicted of three murders but are believed to have killed as many as 20 women between 1947 and 1949. They were executed together on March 8, 1951.
Arguably the most famous execution in state history (although occurring under federal, and not under New York state law) occurred in June 1953, whenJulius and Ethel Rosenberg were put to death at Sing Sing after their conviction on federalespionage charges for passing secrets of the atomic bomb to theSoviet Union. The Rosenbergs were the only American civilians to be executed for espionage-related activity during theCold War. Ethel’s conviction and severely botched execution remains controversial asDavid Greenglass, Ethel's brother and a key witness for the prosecution, later said that he gave a perjured testimony against Ethel to shield his wife from criminal liability.[17] In 2015, eleven members of the New York City Council declared that "the government wrongfully executed Ethel Rosenberg," and Manhattan Borough PresidentGale Brewer officially recognized "the injustice suffered by Ethel Rosenberg and her family" and designated September 28 as the "Ethel Rosenberg Day of Justice in the Borough of Manhattan."[18]
In 1965, GovernorNelson Rockefeller, aliberal Republican who had previously supported capital punishment and overseen the last executions in the state, signed legislation which abolished the death penalty except for cases involving the murder of a peace officer or when the offender is a life convict. In 1971, it was extended to murder of a correctional employee, and the electric chair was moved fromSing Sing toGreen Haven Correctional Facility.[19][20]
In the July 1972 ruling inFurman v. Georgia, theU.S. Supreme Court struck down the existing death penalty procedures across the United States. The moratorium lasted until 1976 when the Court ruled inGregg v. Georgia that states could resume capital punishment under reworked statutes.
Following the ruling ofGregg v. Georgia, New York was one of the few states that did not immediately return the death penalty following the ruling. There was legislation to return the death penalty as a sanction that passed theAssembly andSenate, but wasvetoed byDemocraticGovernorsHugh Carey andMario Cuomo.[21][22][23]
A mandatory death sentence for murder committed by a life convict was still provided by the law of the time, under which serial killerLemuel Smith was sentenced to death in 1983 for murdering a female prison officer. This statute was nullified in 1984.[24] The electric chair was nevertheless maintained in workable conditions.[19]
In 1989,Donald Trump designed an ad calling to bring back the death penalty in New York during theCentral Park jogger case, four black men and one Hispanic male accused of the rape and attempted murder of a white female jogger inCentral Park. They were exonerated in 2002.[25]
In 1994,RepublicanGeorge Pataki was elected governor after promising during his campaign to reinstate the death penalty.
On January 11, 1995, eleven days after Pataki took office, convicted killerThomas J. Grasso, who had been sentenced to death by Oklahoma but was serving a sentence of 20 years to life in New York, was extradited from New York to Oklahoma to face execution.[26] Grasso was transported toBuffalo Niagara International Airport and flown to Oklahoma. He was executed via lethal injection on March 20, 1995.[27] The extradition was previously blocked by Pataki's predecessor Mario Cuomo who opposed capital punishment.
Capital punishment was reinstated in New York in 1995 for a wide-range of aggravating factors, when Pataki signed a new statute into law, which provided forexecution bylethal injection.[28] However, there were no executions before the capital punishment statute was nullified in 2004.
On June 24, 2004, theNew York Court of Appeals, the state's highest court, held 4–3 inPeople v. LaValle that the state's death penalty statute violated theNew York Constitution, because in case of a deadlocked jury the judge could impose a sentence lesser than life without parole, so jurors would be "coerced" to vote for death solely to prevent the convict from being paroled.[6] Governor Pataki criticized the ruling and called for a quick legislative fix.
Between December 2004 and February 2005, public hearings were held inManhattan andAlbany.New York Law School professor and death penalty advocateRobert Blecker advocated strongly in favor of reinstatement, whileManhattan local prosecutorRobert M. Morgenthau strongly opposed reinstatement, an issue which had political significance during the subsequent district attorney elections.[29][30][31][32]
In 2005, supporters of the death penalty in theNew York Legislature passed a bill restoring New York's death penalty in the Republican-controlledState Senate,[33][34][35] but the legislation was voted down by a legislative committee in the Democratic-controlledNew York Assembly, and was not enacted into law.[7]
In 2007, the New York Court of Appeals decided inPeople v. Taylor that the statute defect could not be corrected by a judge instruction to the jury that he would impose life without parole. This led to the commutation of the last of the seven death sentences that were imposed under the 1995 statute.[3]
In 2008, the State Senate again passed legislation that would have established the death penalty for the murder oflaw enforcement officers, but the Assembly did not act on the legislation.[36] In July of that year,Governor David Paterson ordered the removal of all execution equipment used to perform lethal injection and the closure of the execution chamber at Green Haven Correctional Facility.[37]
The 1995 statute has never been repealed and is still on the books.[38]
From the 1995 reinstatement of capital punishment in the state to its abolishment in 2007, only seven death sentences were handed down. The state's only modern-age death row inmates were:
There is currently no inmate on federal death row sentenced for a crime committed in the state of New York.
In 2007,Ronell Wilson was sentenced to death for the murder of two undercover New York City police officers inStaten Island, but the sentence was later reversed as result of a ruling from theSecond Circuit appeal court.
In 2023, federal prosecutors sought the death penalty againstSayfullo Saipov for the2017 New York City truck attack which killed eight people. Saipov was ultimately sentenced to life after the jurydeadlocked on sentencing.
The federal death penalty is currently pursued in the following cases:
New York State's highest court ruled yesterday that a central provision of the state's capital punishment law violated the State Constitution. Lawyers said the ruling would probably spare the lives of the four men now on death row and effectively suspend the death penalty in New York.
NEW YORK, April 12 -- New York's death penalty is no more. A legislative committee tossed out a bill Tuesday aimed at reinstating the state's death penalty, which a court had suspended last year. It was an extraordinary bit of drama, not least because a top Democrat who once strongly supported capital punishment led the fight to end it.
THE SCRIPT -- A narrator says: 'For district attorney, a clear choice. Eliot Spitzer calls Bob Morgenthau the best prosecutor in the nation. Morgenthau's innovative policies have brought crime in Manhattan down to record lows. And Morgenthau is leading the fight against the death penalty. Leslie Crocker Snyder supports the death penalty. She even told one defendant that she would have been willing to give him the lethal injection herself. Leslie Crocker Snyder. Wrong on the death penalty. Wrong for Manhattan.'
There are some aspects of Ms. Snyder's record that give us pause. Unlike Mr. Morgenthau, she supports the death penalty.
A liberal Democratic lion, he never once sought the death penalty; and yet the city's most confrontational mayors, Edward I. Koch and Rudolph W. Giuliani, hesitated to slash at him.
Capital punishment is contrary to our values as New Yorkers. It is immoral and it is wrong. I have always opposed capital punishment, and will lead the effort against any attempt to revive it in New York.
Senator Thomas P. Morahan announced that the New York State Senate passed legislation that will reinstate the death penalty for criminals who kill police officers. The Senate also passed a bill that would amend the state's death penalty law to fix a provision that was ruled invalid by the state Court of Appeals.
The Republican-led State Senate voted yesterday to restore New York's death penalty, but the Democratic-controlled Assembly has shown little inclination to follow suit. The vote in the Senate was 37 to 22, mostly along party lines.
The New York State Senate today passed legislation, sponsored by Senator Martin Golden (R-C, Brooklyn), that would establish the death penalty for criminals who kill police officers.