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Post by Charlene on Dec 3, 2003 19:11:33 GMT -6
Death Sentence Rejected by Court By Jordan Rau ALBANY BUREAU CHIEF, Albany bureau researcher Andrea Baker contributed to this story.
November 26, 2003
In sparing the life of a man who fatally poisoned his wife as she lay in a hospital bed recuperating from a beating he gave her with a baseball bat, the state's highest court signaled yesterday that New York's death penalty must be reserved for cases more heinous than straightforward murder.
The decision is the second since New York reinstituted the death penalty in 1995. Like last year's ruling in the case of Darrel Harris, the new Court of Appeals decision upheld the conviction but overturned the punishment, without addressing the national debate about whether the death penalty ever can be imposed without regard to race and with assurance that innocent defendants are not killed.
Five men remain on death row. Another 120 inmates are serving life without parole, an alternative sentence to death under the 1995 capital punishment statute.
By a 4-2 vote the court ordered that James Cahill III, convicted of first-degree murder, be resentenced by a Syracuse-area court for second-degree murder, which carries a minimum prison term of 15 years to life.
Cahill's fate revolved around the portion of the state's death penalty statute that restricts executions to murders committed with any one of 13 aggravating circumstances, including killing someone to interfere with the justice system and murdering during the course of carrying out another serious crime.
Prosecutors convinced a jury that Cahill qualified for execution because he had broken into his wife Jill's hospital room in 1998 to kill her, thus committing burglary. The jury also agreed that Cahill had wanted to silence her from testifying against him in the upcoming assault trial.
But the decision, written by Judge Albert Rosenblatt, disagreed. "The better part of the evidence reveals that defendant was motivated to poison his wife because their marriage and family life were being destroyed," he wrote. "There is scant basis to believe that defendant thought he could avoid an assault conviction by murdering Jill."
The majority decision also rejected the notion that Cahill had been committing the separate crime of burglary, saying that his only intent in breaking into the room was to kill his wife.
"This has to be a message to prosecutors to pick those cases very carefully," said James Acker, a criminal justice professor at SUNY Albany. "The majority really seemed to me to epitomize the sentiment that death penalty cases are different and do demand special scrutiny."
Judges Victoria Graffeo and Susan Phillips Read issued forceful dissents chastising the majority for having "vigorously second-guessed" what Read called "legitimate choices" made by the State Legislature and the trial judge and the "measured, reasoned verdict" of the jury.
In Albany, Gov. George Pataki said, "One thing that's certain is that it doesn't affect the constitutionality of the death penalty, and I think that's important."
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Post by Felix on Dec 8, 2003 4:43:36 GMT -6
Seems to me that under the law as it stands there at present, in rejecting it, the judge pointed out valid facts to note?
Felix
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