New York Nearer to Death Penalty Despite Governor’s Expected Veto

Sometime in the next few weeks, Democratic Gov. Mario M. Cuomo will veto a state death penalty bill, as he has for each of the last six years. This time, however, it will be more than an empty ritual.

The Democrat-controlled Assembly, which passed the legislation last month, has mustered 99 votes for capital punishment, one short of the two-thirds majority needed to override Cuomo’s veto. The Republican Senate routinely has voted to override such vetoes.

At a time when spiraling drug-related violence and murders of several law-enforcement officers have eclipsed all other issues here, the pressure on wavering assembly members to provide the 100th vote has reached fever pitch.

“The people want something to be done,” said Assemblyman Edward Abramson, a Democrat from the Howard Beach section of Queens, who dropped his opposition and became the 99th vote for the state death penalty.

“Meanwhile, they’re shooting up cops in the community, probation officers are being killed, and we’ve got nothing to show for it but another fight in Albany,” he said. “This has been going on for 15 years. I’m tired of this nonsense.”

1 of 14 States

New York, where no one has been executed since 1963, is one of 14 states without capital punishment. Death-penalty bills have been vetoed in Albany for 12 consecutive years, first by then-Gov. Hugh Carey, also a Democrat, and then by Cuomo, who has been dogged by the issue since he ran for mayor of New York City in 1977.

“I believe the death penalty demeans the values that form the core of American life,” Cuomo said in a previous veto message. “Capital punishment is a terrible concession, a desperate response that substitutes one evil for another. There is a better response to killing than killing.”

Abramson said he would be willing to abandon the death-penalty bill if Cuomo would support life imprisonment without parole for serious crimes. Actually, Cuomo has proposed such legislation six times and repeated his support for it recently. His measure would apply to murders of police and correctional officers, contract killings and those committed during drug sales, burglaries, arson, rapes and other crimes.

Gary Fryer, Cuomo’s chief spokesman, said the legislature’s refusal to approve life without parole underscores a cynical approach to electric-chair politics.

“It’s not the death penalty they want,” Fryer said. “They like the issue. This is a very convenient issue for the low-lifes of politics. If someone says the subways are falling apart, you say: ‘Death penalty.’

“It’s the neatest, cheapest, dumbest political issue you can imagine, but it works like a charm. It is political pandering of the worst sort. It’s a hypnotic, an opiate. You play to the fears of people.”

Assemblyman Jerry Nadler, a Manhattan Democrat, agreed. “It’s not a solution, it’s an appeal to emotion,” he said. “It’s obviously not a deterrent. You’ve got other states in the union with a higher murder rate that have the death penalty. People who kill people are not thinking they’re going to be caught.”

‘Justice Not Perfect’

Nadler said he opposes the bill because “justice is not perfect. We have made mistakes. Without question, if we have the death penalty, we will execute innocent people.”

Other opponents cited moral concerns. “I believe the only person who has the right to take a life away is God,” said Assemblyman Israel Martinez, a Bronx Democrat. “Nobody is going to change my mind. At this point, I’m going to follow what the Bible says.”

Proponents clearly have public opinion on their side, fueled by the record-breaking level of nearly 1,900 homicides in New York City last year.

“The opponents of the death penalty say that somehow it takes away from the civilization,” said state Sen. Dale Volker, a Buffalo-area Republican. “But would anyone say that our streets are more civilized today? I don’t claim that we can deter every murder, but I do claim we can deter some murders. We’re at a point where we have to send a dramatic message out to the streets.

“The turning point in the murder rate was when the death penalty was abolished” in the 1960s, he said. “My father, Julius Volker, who was in the Assembly at the time, said violent crimes would reach record proportions. He was like a prophet.”

Cuomo and most minority lawmakers have contended that the death penalty is discriminatory because most of those executed are black men. But Abramson, whose Queens district is 78% black, said the issue crosses racial lines.

Ethnic Backing

“Most of the polling that’s been done shows that even in New York City’s black and Hispanic areas, they favor the death penalty by 65% to 70%,” said Assemblyman Vincent Graber, a Buffalo Democrat. “Members who are voting no are not reflecting their constituencies.”

Graber said that four or five assemblymen with “philosophical reservations” about capital punishment “might buckle” when the override vote is held this spring. Even opponents see the bill’s passage as inevitable.

“Year by year, they get closer, and it’s just a question of time,” Nadler said.