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N.Y. Assembly Debating Fate of State Death Penalty

By Michael Powell
Washington Post Staff Writer



Saturday, February 12, 2005; Page A03

NEW YORK, Feb. 11 -- The death house haunted Stephen Dalsheim for decades.

As a young man counseling inmates, he'd watch the condemned arrive at Sing Sing, a huge prison alongside the Hudson River. Dalsheim became the prison's superintendent in 1977 and found a closet filled with boxes of death row records.

At night he'd open the files and read.

"I saw what happens to the organs when men are electrocuted," said Dalsheim, 77, whose curly hair now is a cloud of white. "I know there are innocent people on death row -- I met a few of them. It's a barbaric system, and it must end."

The retired superintendent spoke publicly against the death penalty for the first time at a State Assembly hearing Friday. It's all part of an extraordinary drama playing out in New York, in which the legislature appears poised to toss out the death penalty.

Ten years ago, George E. Pataki (R) rode the death penalty issue to the governor's mansion, defeating Gov. Mario M. Cuomo (D). Soon after, Pataki and the legislature reinstated the penalty by wide margins.

Last June, however, New York's highest court struck down the law on what amounted to a technicality. Pataki supported a quick legislative fix, but the Democratic-controlled assembly balked. Now Republican and Democratic leaders alike acknowledge that the law is likely to die.

Many legislators, not least several who supported the death penalty in 1995, say much has changed. National attention has fixed on wrongful convictions, as several dozen death row inmates have been freed after evidence -- often DNA -- proved their innocence.

In Illinois in 2003, then-Gov. George Ryan (R) commuted the death sentences of 167 inmates after 13 inmates were found to have been wrongly convicted. Last week, the Kansas Supreme Court struck down that state's death penalty law, stating that it essentially forced juries -- when all evidence is equal -- to choose the death penalty instead of life in prison.

(The view is very different at the federal level, where the Clinton and Bush administrations have expanded the potential use of the death penalty for certain drug and terrorism crimes, as well as for homicide.)

Public perceptions have changed, too. In the late 1980s, crack cocaine fueled a fast-running plague of homicides and brutal robberies. Urban society seemed frayed and incapable of safeguarding its citizenry.

Now crime rates have been falling for a decade, and public clamor for the death penalty has become muted. A recent poll found that 53 percent of New Yorkers favor life sentences rather than the death penalty.

Assemblyman Joseph R. Lentol (Brooklyn) watched his working-class constituents suffer and in 1995 he was one of many Democrats who voted for the death penalty. Now he's a Democratic leader -- and ready to vote against it.

"You know, as I grow older, I realize maybe we can get beyond vengeance," he said. "The death penalty is fraught with the possibility that you could execute an innocent man. Who could live with that?"

Throughout its history, New York executed inmates with a startling efficiency. Executioners have put 695 people to death, second only to Texas. New York has not carried out any executions since the law was reinstated in 1995. Convicted murderer Eddie Lee Mays was the last person put to death, in 1963.

Despite the new opposition to capital punishment, the Republican-controlled state Senate still supports the death penalty. Assembly leaders acknowledge that if they put the measure to a vote -- rather than letting it die with a floor debate -- the margin would be thin.

"The governor believes that a strong death penalty law is a critical deterrent to crime," spokesman Todd Alhart said. "The assembly leadership should stop their delaying tactics and bring this to a vote."

Assemblyman Ryan Scott Karben (D) represents a suburban district north of the city and spoke of wrestling with the issue late into the night, reading books and reports. He would not argue that the death penalty is anything but brutal. Yet he believes it's a weapon the state must possess.

"I believe there are some crimes so horrific that it irrevocably rends the social contract," Karben said. "I think there's a place for collective disgust with morally reprehensible acts."

Dalsheim, the retired superintendent, is a political liberal but no naif. He readily acknowledges the state's maximum-security prisons hold many exceedingly dangerous men. But he came to know some of those men, including death row inmates, and he spoke of the cumulative impact of the death penalty -- on the inmates who live in its shadow and the guards who lead them to their deaths.

Two former executioners committed suicide after many years of such duty.

"There was this big old-line committed officer, a well-liked fellow, and he oversaw the executions," Dalsheim said. "Afterwards, he'd get very, very drunk and not come in for several days."

Dalsheim paused in the telling, swallowing twice. "It's terrible, terrible -- I get very emotional thinking about it. I certainly don't like terrorism or murder but there has to be a better way than putting men to death."

© 2005 The Washington Post Company