ALBANY — New York’s highest court has refused to carve out an exception to its 2004 decision that found the state’s death penalty law unconstitutional.

In a 4-3 decision, the Court of Appeals said the death penalty for a defendant in one of the state’s most horrific murders was the result of a “coercive” instruction to the jury that faced choosing a sentence of death or life without parole.

The court was being asked to reconsider its landmark decision that invalidated a crucial part of New York death penalty statute. The court effectively halted death penalty prosecutions statewide when it found a constitutional shortcoming in the provision of the law spelling out how trial judges instruct juries during sentencing in capital cases.

But prosecutors who won a death sentence against John Taylor for the murders of five Wendy’s workers in Queens claimed that ruling did not affect Taylor’s sentence. Prosecutors said the judge in that case was careful not to violate the constitution — an argument that would have opened an exception to the court’s 2004 finding.

Taylor, 43, has been the only person on New York’s death row and will now be re-sentenced to life without parole.

The court said New York’s current death penalty statute is fatally flawed, but the state Legislature could enact a law that is constitutional.

“We are ultimately left exactly where we were three years ago: The death penalty sentencing statute is unconstitutional on its face and it is not within our power to save the statute … the Legislature, mindful of our state’s due process protections, may re-enact a sentencing statute that is free of coercion and is cognizant of a jury’s need to know the consequences of its choice,” Chief Judge Judith Kaye wrote in the majority decision.

Taylor was sentenced to die by lethal injection after his conviction for the execution-style killings of five employees of the Wendy’s restaurant in 2000. He and an accomplice forced seven workers into a walk-in refrigerator in the basement, bound their hands, blindfolded them, forced them to kneel and shot each in the head. Only two survived.

A co-defendant with mild retardation was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

The six other killers sentenced to die under New York’s 1995 capital punishment law had their sentences reduced after the Court of Appeals overturned the death sentence against Long Island school teacher killer Stephen LaValle. The judges found that part of the law was unfair to defendants because it required judges to tell jurors that if they deadlocked, the court would sentence the defendant to a parole-eligible life term. Critics said the provision might make jurors more likely to apply the death penalty.