Friday, October 17, 2008

NY's Death House is History

The death house, where executions were to have been performed in New York state under the 1995 capital punishment statute, is formally out of existence.

Rescission became final yesterday of a Department of Correctional Services regulation designating Green Haven Correctional Facility in Dutchess County as the site of the execution chamber. No one was given a lethal injection in the death house, as a series of Court of Appeals rulings struck down the capital punishment statute as unconstitutional.

The most recent of those rulings, People v. Taylor, 9 NY3d 129 (2007), removed the last inmate from death row under the death penalty law. (NYLJ, Oct. 24, 2007). That prisoner, Wendy's restaurant killer John Taylor, is now incarcerated in a unit of the Clinton Correcitonal Facility in Clinton County, where death row had been set up for condemned male inmates. All 7 death penalty verdicts rendered by juries in capital cases were vacated as the Court identified constitutional infirmities with the law. A majority of Democrats who dominate the state Assembly do not support legislation reviving the death penalty.

Source: New York Law Journal, October 16, 2008

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