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December 16, 2004

Morgenthau and Others Speak Out Against Death Penalty

By MARC SANTORA

The battle over whether New York should reinstate the death penalty went before the public yesterday, as witnesses at a state legislative hearing delivered a blistering indictment of capital punishment.

The fierce opposition to restoring the death penalty was a sharp turnabout from 10 years ago, when a political outcry over high crime and a new governor, George E. Pataki, who had made the issue a central theme of his campaign, helped usher capital punishment into law.

But yesterday, at an emotional and jam-packed Assembly committee hearing, a range of speakers, from District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau of Manhattan to legal experts and even to families of murder victims, tried to persuade lawmakers not to restore the death penalty, which was effectively struck down by the state's highest court in June because of technical flaws.

In opposing the death penalty, Mr. Morgenthau cited F.B.I. statistics showing that states with the death penalty have homicide rates that are 44 percent higher then those without it. And he also cited his own philosophical objections to the law, quoting George Bernard Shaw. "It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it."

"The death penalty exacts a terrible price in dollars, lives and human decency," Mr. Morgenthau said. "Rather than tamping down the flames of violence, it fuels them."

Aides to Mr. Pataki have described the hearings as "obstructionist," calling them a stalling tactic to prevent restoration of the death penalty. During a year-end news conference with reporters yesterday, the governor called the Legislature's failure to reimpose the death sentence one of the year's biggest pieces of unfinished business. "I believe the death penalty is a part of a balanced and fair approach to criminal justice, and we were unable to get the court decision fixed so that the death penalty continues to be in place," he said.

Despite pressure from Mr. Pataki, it seemed unlikely that action would be taken anytime soon. Several more public hearings are planned, and opponents of the death penalty hoped to use them to convince Democratic lawmakers that the public mood is different from a decade ago.

Sheldon Silver, the speaker of the Assembly, supported the death penalty then and has said he still supports it. But opposition to the death penalty among his Democratic colleagues in the Assembly is so strong that he decided to hold hearings on it.

Assemblyman Joseph R. Lentol, a Democrat from Brooklyn who led yesterday's hearing, said Democrats were committed to bringing the matter to a conclusion, one way or the other, in the next session. "We may have a blood bath in our conference over the issue, but we will make a decision," he said.

The hearings were as much about listening to the experts as gauging public opinion, he said. Mr. Lentol voted to reinstate the death penalty in 1995, but said he was now reassessing his position. "I think the landscape has certainly changed," he said. He observed that roughly half of the Democrats in the Assembly were not in Albany in 1995.

Still, the state's top Democrats, including Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Charles E. Schumer, remain in favor of the death penalty. Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, who has announced his intention to run for governor in 2006, also said through a spokesman that he remains committed to the death penalty, but he would not comment specifically on New York's law.

At yesterday's hearing hundreds of people crowded into the meeting hall of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. The tone of most of the speakers was against the death penalty. Mr. Lentol said an effort would be made to seek greater balance in future hearings.

Opponents of the death penalty supported Mr. Morgenthau's testimony, saying it carried considerable weight given that he has served as Manhattan's top prosecutor since 1975. Mr. Morgenthau has not sought the death penalty in any case he has tried since it was reinstated, and his testimony was his most forceful public appeal on the subject since the court's ruling in June.

He was unequivocal in stating what the Assembly should do now. "I urge all of our lawmakers, in the strongest possible terms, not to reinstate the death penalty in New York," he said.

Later in the day, after hours of testimony by experts and family members of murder victims, Andrew M. Cuomo said that some 300 disparate groups had joined together to voice their opposition to the death penalty.

Mr. Pataki used the death penalty as a campaign issue against Mr. Cuomo's father, Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, a passionate opponent of capital punishment. Mr. Pataki won that 1994 race and, with little debate and no public hearings, the death penalty law was passed with support from the state's top Democrats.

The younger Mr. Cuomo, who has said he is considering running for attorney general, said he believed that the mood of the public was different now, in part because of falling crime rates. He also said he believed it is possible to win statewide office and oppose the death penalty. But he admitted that it is hard to know where the public stands because attitudes can change quickly and the debate can boil down to the politics of the moment, particularly if crime is in the public's consciousness.

An added element in the current debate is that New York now has mandatory life sentences without the possibility of parole, something that did not exist before 1995. In one of the few arguments in favor of the death penalty, Robert Blecker, a lawyer and professor at New York Law School, took certain members to task for supporting that harsh penalty, but not execution. "Search your own souls, you advocates of life without parole," he said.

Michael Cooper contributed reporting for this article.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company