ALBANY – The death penalty will not be an option for juries in New York this year following the decision yesterday by a committee in the Democratic led Assembly to prevent a floor vote on the law.

The Assembly Committee on Codes, whose chairman is Joseph Lentol, Democrat of Brooklyn, voted 11-to-7 to keep the issue from going before the full Assembly, after months of speculation on what the chamber would do.

The state Court of Appeals found a constitutional flaw in New York’s death penalty law last June that has put the statute in limbo. The Republican-led Senate passed a bill last month that addressed the court’s concern, and the Senate had been pressuring the Assembly to do the same.

Governor Pataki, a Republican who defeated Governor Cuomo in 1994, is thought to have won that election in large part because of his support for capital punishment. But a recent poll by the Siena Research Institute suggested that New Yorkers are now evenly split on whether to restore it.

The Assembly’s refusal to act on the issue had become a source of intense political argument in Albany in recent months, because many of those who have blocked reinstatement are open supporters of capital punishment. Senate Republicans who support the death sentence say Assembly Democrats are trying to have it both ways.

Mr. Lentol, who voted in favor of the death penalty when it was reinstated in 1995, said one reason for the committee’s vote was a string of Assembly hearings over the past year in which expert witnesses detailed cases where innocents had been put to death.

Among those being criticized is the speaker of the Assembly, Sheldon Silver, Democrat of Manhattan. Yesterday, Mr. Silver reaffirmed his support for the death penalty but said he recognizes a shift in public opinion.

“Public-opinion polls show a very divided public out there,” Mr. Silver said. “Me personally, I don’t think I have a moral objection to it. At this point I have serious practical questions about it.”

Mr. Lentol, who said he now opposes the death penalty, denied the committee’s vote was a strategic move aimed at preventing lawmakers from making a choice on the issue. He said the vote reflects a broader change in thinking within the chamber.

“We’ve voted on the death penalty in the codes committee for the past 30 years, and for the past 30 years it has come to a floor vote,” Mr. Lentol said. “It isn’t as though there is a political thing going on here, or that anyone wanted to decide the outcome by having the codes committee handle it.”

The executive director of New Yorkers Against the Death Penalty, David Kaczynski, welcomed the decision by the codes committee. He said polls show that a large majority of New Yorkers prefer allowing the imposition of sentences of life without parole to the death penalty.

“I think the people have begun to wake up to the fact that the government cannot do things perfectly,” Mr. Kaczynski, brother of the Unabomber, said. “It makes mistakes. There have been mistakes in the past. There will be mistakes in the future.”

Mr. Kaczynski criticized the Senate for passing a bill to restore the death penalty without holding hearings, as the Assembly did. “To me it’s political arrogance to deal with an issue like that and not at least try to wrestle with it,” Mr. Kaczynski said.

In its decision, the court said New York’s death penalty law violated the due-process clause of the state Constitution because of a stipulation that enables judges to hand down a sentence in the event of a jury deadlock. The court said jurors who oppose the death penalty, but are fearful a defendant would be given a prison sentence that provides for parole, might be compelled to vote for the death penalty instead.

The Senate bill that was passed addressed the question of a juror deadlock, but by shelving the issue the Assembly committee punted the restoration of the death penalty to another session, effectively capping the maximum penalty for premeditated murder as life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The majority leader of the Senate, Joseph Bruno, derided the vote, calling the death penalty a major deterrent to violent crime in New York.

“Crime is at the lowest rate in New York State in its history and one of the lowest rates of violent crimes and murders in the country,” Mr. Bruno, a Republican of Rensselaer, said. “We think it’s because we’ve had a death penalty bill … and we think it is a deterrent and we think it ought to be passed.”

Mr. Pataki also expressed disappointment over the vote. “It’s outrageous that the Assembly codes committee would block such an important bill from coming to the floor for a vote,” Mr. Pataki said. “Once again the Assembly leadership is failing New Yorkers by refusing to enact tough criminal-justice legislation that would reduce crime, save lives, and protect families. The Assembly leadership’s ‘so what’ attitude toward criminals, whether they’re sex offenders, deadly drivers, or heinous murderers, is simply shameful. They need to stop protecting criminals and start protecting New Yorkers.”