Statement by David Kaczynski, Exec. Director of New Yorkers Against the Death

ALBANY, NY (06/20/2007)(readMedia)-- Today’s move by the State Senate to pass a “quick fix” of New York’s unconstitutional death penalty statute is a political gesture that has no chance of becoming law, no practical usefulness as public policy, and contributes nothing to rational public dialogue.

While all New Yorkers have an investment in reducing violence in our state, a flawed and unworkable death penalty statute does not make anyone safer. Instead it risks executing the innocent, is prohibitively expensive to administer, has no value as a deterrent, subjects murder victims’ families to years of excruciating appeals, and diverts limited public resources away from other valuable crime-fighting measures. The death penalty is not only ineffective but incredibly wasteful. The principal effect of the death penalty is to create more work for lawyers. Scarce taxpayer dollars should be spent instead on beefing up police departments, improving the DNA data base, funding domestic violence services and gang interdiction programs – or any number of effective crime-fighting programs that actually contribute to the public welfare.

A sentence of life without parole – available in New York since 1995 - is the better option for many reasons: it effectively protects the public at a fraction of the cost of the death penalty. Most importantly, it provides a margin for error in cases of wrongful conviction that will undoubtedly occur.

It is particularly disturbing that the Senate would attempt to bring back the death penalty without first addressing the plague of wrongful convictions in New York. Since late 2005, eight New Yorkers have been exonerated by DNA or other means after serving long prison terms for crimes they did not commit. One of the eight exonerees is Doug Warney, of Rochester, who was the first person charged capitally under New York’s 1995 statute. New York ranks second to Texas in the total number of DNA exonerations.

The Senate has voted, in effect, to execute the innocent along with the guilty. When it passed S319 in May, a bill that would impose the death penalty for killers of police and correctional officers, it simultaneously rejected an amendment that would have incorporated widely-recommended innocence protections. It is truly hard to fathom why any elected official would want to impose the death penalty without first taking every rational step to insure that the defendant is actually guilty.

When the state Assembly held public hearings on the death penalty in 2004 and 2005, it represented a giant step forward in legislative reform and rational politics. Today’s move by the Senate represents the outdated, dysfunctional politics of the past. If the Senate really wants to being back the death penalty in some form, it has a responsibility to study the issue openly and methodically. If they do, we believe they will find what thee Assembly has found: that there are better ways to fight crime.

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