Last Death Sentence Commuted
In 2007, the New York Court of Appeals heard arguments in People v. John Taylor, and, in rejecting the arguments of the Queens District Attorney, commuted the sentence to life without parole, leaving New York with an empty death row.
Read more about this topic: Capital Punishment In New York
Famous quotes containing the words death, sentence and/or commuted:
“We should stop looking to law to provide the final answer.... Law cannot save us from ourselves.... We have to go out and try to accomplish our goals and resolve disagreements by doing what we think is right. That energy and resourcefulness, not millions of legal cubicles, is what was great about America. Let judgment and personal conviction be important again.”
—Philip K. Howard, U.S. lawyer. The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America, pp. 186-87, Random House (1994)
“New York state sentence for a Peeping Tom is six months in the workhouse. And they got no windows in the workhouse. You know, in the old days they used to put your eyes out with a red-hot poker.”
—John Michael Hayes (b. 1919)
“The case of Andrews is really a very bad one, as appears by the record already before me. Yet before receiving this I had ordered his punishment commuted to imprisonment ... and had so telegraphed. I did this, not on any merit in the case, but because I am trying to evade the butchering business lately.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)