Death row in the American criminal justice system

Death Penalty Abolishment

On June 24th 2004 the Supreme Court of the State of New York determined that the state's jury instructions regarding the death penalty was unconstitutional; effectively abolishing the death penalty in New York. The specific case involved in this decision was the case of Stephan LaValle, who was "convicted of first degree murder and a jury sentenced him to death." ("People v LaValle") However, when his case was appealed to the New York Court of Appeals, LaValle argued that the deadlock instructions given to the jury were unconstitutional under the De Process Clauses of both the state and federal constitutions.

According to the state of New York's statute at the time, if a defendant was found guilty of first degree murder, the jury was then instructed to determine the sentence; either life without the possibility of parole or death. Whatever the jury decided, the decision must be unanimous, and if they were unable to reach a unanimous decision, the court would automatically impose a life sentence, but with the eligibility for parole after 20-25 years. In effect, if the jury could not decide, then the court would impose a lighter sentence than the two choices given to the jury. The highest court in New York determined that a jury may be inclined to imposed the death sentence on a defendant just to ensure that they would not be released at sometime in the future, and this violated the constitutional rights of the defendant.

It was the case of Anthony Porter, a man sentenced to death and who came within 50 hours of his execution before the court decided to intervene. And watching from the governor's mansion in Springfield Illinois, Governor George Ryan turned to his wife and said "how the hell does that happen? How does an innocent man sit on death row for 15 years and gets no relief?" (Mills, 2011) It was at that very moment that the death penalty in Illinois began to be abolished. Anthony Porter was convicted of robbing and killing two teens: Marilyn Green and Jerry Hillard, and sentenced to death. After many appeals which were ultimately denied, Porter's lawyers attempted to have him declared unfit to be executed because of mental incompetence; Porters I.Q. was only 51. This made him officially mildly retarded, and his lawyers argued that because of this disability, he was unable to fully comprehend either his crime or the punishment. Accepting this argument, the Supreme Court of Illinois decided to reverse his conviction on March 11, 1999.