[Deathpenalty]death penalty news --- N.Y.

[Joerg Sommer]

death penalty news

December 20, 2004


NEW YORK:

The Death Penalty

To the Editor:
Re "New Debate Over Restoring Death Penalty" (news article, Dec. 16):

The Manhattan district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, opposes capital 
punishment because "states with the death penalty have homicide rates that 
are 44 percent higher than those without it" and "rather than tamping down 
the flames of violence, it fuels them."

But it can be reasonably argued that these states choose to impose the 
death penalty precisely because they possess the factors and subpopulations 
that disproportionately contribute to a high homicide rate. Moreover, to 
claim that the death penalty fuels violence is to argue that it not only 
doesn't decrease the murder rate, but also increases it more than it would 
otherwise be increased. This claim is dubious in the extreme.

If the proponent of the death penalty is incorrect in his belief that the 
penalty deters homicide, then he is responsible for the execution of 
murderers who should not be executed. If the opponent of the death penalty 
is incorrect in his belief that the death penalty doesn't deter, he is 
responsible for the murder of innocent individuals who would not have been 
murdered if the death penalty had been invoked.

[Steven Goldberg, New York, Dec. 16, 2004. The writer is chairman of the 
sociology department at City College, CUNY.]

(source: Opinion, New York Times)


------------------------


Temperature Seems to Cool on Death Law

Assemblyman Joseph R. Lentol, head of the legislative committee that held a 
hearing last week on the death penalty, was saying afterward that he was 
not sure where Eliot Spitzer stood on the issue.

That's Eliot Spitzer, New York's Democratic attorney general and a 
candidate for governor in a state where the death penalty has made and 
dashed careers.

Ten years ago, George E. Pataki's pledge to reinstate the death penalty 
helped him defeat Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, a committed foe of capital 
punishment. Candidates would telegraph their fealty to the death penalty 
before clearing their throats.

But Mr. Lentol does not know the position of the man who could lead the 
state's Democratic ticket in 2006, because Mr. Spitzer hasn't done the 
usual drill.

This, we submit, is no accident. The attorney general - who, by the way, 
says he favors the death penalty for "premeditated crimes of terrorism" - 
senses he does not have to trumpet his position, or fears that it could 
even hurt him with some voters.

And that makes this a moment in New York. It suggests a change in the 
climate surrounding the death penalty, in limbo since June, when the 
state's highest court found a sentencing guideline in the law 
unconstitutional. With crime down, doubts up, instances in which DNA 
evidence has cleared people, and life without parole an option in New York 
since 1995 - the issue may have lost its edge.

Mr. Spitzer says he does think public emotions have calmed down. "Improper 
convictions in Texas and elsewhere have shaken some folks' confidence in 
the application of the death penalty," he said in an interview. "You never 
predict, but I would be surprised if it's an issue that is paramount in 
public debate."

But Robert Blecker, a professor at New York Law School and an outspoken 
advocate of capital punishment, argues that death penalty supporters have 
not mobilized more aggressively because they are sure the Legislature will 
revise the law.

The Republican-led State Senate has already approved a new version, but the 
Assembly, more divided on the issue, is taking its time. It can approve a 
new law or leave the current one as is. Then the state would have 
life-without-parole on the books - but not the death penalty.

"If we return to the status-quo-ante, we will see a firestorm," predicted 
Professor Blecker. He is confident that proponents of capital punishment 
are still strong and that many New Yorkers who favor life without parole 
will change their minds if they learn that inmates live out their days in, 
he testified, comfort.

So far, the intensity is on the other side. Opponents of the death penalty 
are well organized and well financed. Only 2 of 15 who testified at last 
week's hearing at the City Bar Association's headquarters supported the 
death penalty. Advocates of capital punishment, anticipating abuse, stayed 
away, Professor Blecker said.

BUT something else seems to be afoot. Consider Mr. Lentol, 61, a veteran 
assemblyman from Brooklyn and longtime proponent of capital punishment. Now 
he is not sure. In an interview on Friday, Mr. Lentol said that his father, 
as a state senator, sponsored the 1965 law that abolished the death penalty 
except in very limited circumstances.

Edward S. Lentol, who died in 1981, told his son that he had always favored 
capital punishment until, as a young lawyer, he represented a client who 
insisted he'd been framed for murder. His uncle did it, he said. Mr. Lentol 
didn't believe him, and persuaded the client to accept a plea bargain that 
sent him to prison.

About a year later, news broke that the uncle really had set up Mr. 
Lentol's client. After that, the senior Mr. Lentol became an active 
opponent of capital punishment. Now the younger Mr. Lentol, hearing others 
make arguments his father did, is having second thoughts. "I'm wondering 
whether or not I have been making a mistake all my life," he said. The 
assemblyman will make a final decision after the hearings. Two more are 
scheduled and others may be added.

There is no reliable assessment of sentiment in the Assembly or of how 
Speaker Sheldon Silver, traditionally a death penalty supporter, intends to 
proceed. But, pressured for legislative reform, he has allowed the hearings 
(which Pataki aides called "obstructionist"). In 1995, the Legislature 
overwhelmingly approved the death penalty without holding any hearings. 
That probably could not happen today.

"It's a different time," Andrew M. Cuomo, the former housing secretary, a 
son of the ex-governor and a death penalty opponent, mused at last week's 
hearing.

(source: New York Times)