Appeals Court Likely Split on Death Penalty Law
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The state’s highest court, which struck down New York’s death penalty statute three years ago, is now considering whether to reinstate capital punishment.
An appeal by the last inmate on New York’s death row, John Taylor, reached the seven judges of Albany’s Court of Appeals yesterday. Over five hours of oral arguments, it became clear that the three years since the court struck down the state’s death penalty provision have not erased divisions within the court over whether it ruled correctly in 2004.
Question after question from one of the three judges who had dissented in that case, Robert Smith, indicated that he was wrestling with whether the court should disavow its rejection of the death penalty in its 2004 ruling on The People v. Stephen LaValle.
“How radical would it be to say that we made a mistake in 2004?” Judge Smith asked at one point. Prosecutors from the office of the Queens district attorney, arguing on behalf of the state, urged the court to do just that. It was at a Wendy’s restaurant in Queens in 2000 that Taylor, 43, committed the five murders for which he was condemned. The district attorney for the borough, Richard Brown, has long advocated for the death penalty in the case.
Taylor’s appellate team appeared sensitive to the prospect that their appeal could prompt a split decision from the court. “If reasonable minds can differ, a tie goes to sustaining LaValle and Taylor cannot be executed,” an attorney for Taylor, Susan Salomon, told the court yesterday.
“You can’t have a death penalty of one, simply for John Taylor,” Ms. Salomon said.
In the LaValle decision, the Court of Appeals struck down the state’s 1995 death penalty statute, finding fault with the instructions that judges were required to give to jurors as they chose between a sentence of death and life imprisonment. The instructions warned that a deadlock could result in a sentence of a set number of years. In a 4–3 decision, the court found this violated the state Constitution by pressuring jurors to vote for death to ensure that a convict would never be released from prison.
Two of the judges who voted down the death penalty in the People v. LaValle case have since retired. Their successors, Judges Eugene Pigott and Theodore Jones, offered few signs of whether or not they felt the LaValle decision was applicable to Taylor’s appeal.
The question at the heart of the hearing yesterday was what relevance concerns over jury deadlock had in Taylor’s appeal. During Taylor’s 2002 trial, the judge had indicated that, in the event of a deadlock, he would sentence the defendant to 175 years, by running his minimum sentences consecutively.
The Queens prosecutors argued that in cases like Taylor’s, in which the judge is able to tell jurors that a defendant is unlikely ever to be released, death penalty prosecutions — and any resulting executions — should be allowed. Most potential capital cases would pass this test, an assistant Queens district attorney, Donna Aldea, told the court.
Ms Aldea noted that in the 15 capital trials that have taken place since the death penalty was resumed in 1995, eight defendants faced minimum sentences of more than 75 years, which likely exceeds the life span of an adult defendant.
“Certainly it would be easier if the Legislature just said the default sentence would be life without parole,” Chief Judge Judith Kaye, who in 2004 voted to strike down the death penalty, said.
A move by the Legislature to amend the death statute in accord with the court’s largely technical ruling would put the death penalty back into effect. But the Assembly appears unlikely to approve any bill to amend the death penalty.
The last execution in New York occurred in 1963. Of the seven people sentenced to death under the 1995 death penalty law, six have had their sentences commuted to life in prison.
None of the family members of Taylor’s victims were present in the courtroom, although the Queens district attorney, Mr. Brown, who attended the hearing, said some family members were watching a broadcast of the appeal from his office.
Also in the audience was an anti-death penalty activist, David Kaczynski, the brother of the “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski, and Jeffrey Deskovic, who was released from prison last year after serving 16 years for a rape and murder in Peekskill, N.Y., that he did not commit based on DNA evidence and another convict’s confession.