Shortly
after 2 a.m. Friday, the state of North Carolina executed Frank Chandler by
lethal injection for the murder of 90-year-old Doris Poore.
Less
than 10 hours later, beside a tree planted in front of the downtown Hall of
Justice, a group of about 20 Rochesterians gathered with Chandler and others
like him in mind. “This flowering tree planted in memory of the victims of
homicide in Monroe County, April 1991,” reads a plaque below the tree.
The
group — which goes by the name “Reconciliation Network: Don’t Kill in My
Name” — is dedicated to ending the death penalty in New York State. They’ve
met beside the tree every month for nearly 10 years, ever since the state’s
death penalty law was enacted in 1995.
Now,
as a new legislature heads to Albany following the recent elections, groups
like Reconciliation Network as well as capital punishment proponents will be
watching the proceedings closely. This legislature will likely decide the fate
of the state’s capital statute.
In
the decade since the state adopted a death penalty law, no one has yet been put
to death. In June, the state’s highest court ruled that the law’s sentencing
guidelines unconstitutionally favor the imposition of the death penalty. Under
the statute, if jurors deadlock between death and life in prison without parole
during the sentencing phase of a capital case, a judge then imposes 20-25 years
to life, which carries the possibility of parole. That might coerce jurors into
approving a death penalty to prevent violent offenders from ever being freed,
the court reasoned.
“In the name
of the Eternal One,” Clare Regan intones, then pauses.
“Eternal
One, hear our prayer,” comes the response. Reconciliation Network offers
prayers for those on death row, along with their families, and the families of
both the murder victims and the executed murderers. They also pray for the
anonymous agents of the state who are tasked with carrying out the execution.
“They
find that it’s very traumatic for those who participate,” in the executions,
explains Regan, who led the quasi-liturgical event.
Like
others who want to see the death penalty terminated, Regan is pinning her hopes
on the State Assembly, where opposition to capital punishment is fiercest even
though Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver has said that he favors it. According to
Regan, “He was going to call the Assembly back into session [to pass a quick
fix-it measure] and the Democratic Caucus said ‘Oh, no you don’t.'” Regan
believes that if the Assembly passes a revised statute with the necessary
constitutional safeguards in it, “It’ll be almost impossible to put someone to
death in New York.”
Monroe County
District Attorney Michael Green is more interested in seeing the current
stalemate resolved than which way the legislature chooses to do it.
“My
job as DA isn’t to make the laws, it’s to enforce the laws that are made. And
if the legislature sees fit to enact the death penalty, I don’t have any qualms
about enforcing it and if they don’t, I’ll enforce the law as they write it,”
he says.
“That
being said, what is extremely frustrating for me as a prosecutor is to have a
statute on the books that requires the time and commitment and dedication of
resources that this one does, but then have it in name only,” says Green. “If
we’re going to have a death penalty, we should have one that is an actual death
penalty, and if we’re not, we should get it off the books and stop kidding
people.”
Green’s
frustration is palpable as he speaks of the sense of limbo those involved in
capital cases often feel.
“It
puts me in the very difficult situation as prosecutor of dealing with victims’
families and continuously having to explain to them that we have a death
penalty, but because of court decisions the death penalty is not in effect
right now, but the legislature could act at any time and revive it, and if they
revive it, it may or may not be retroactive to your case, we don’t know that,”
he says. “I feel very strongly that the legislature ought to act one way or the
other and either fix it or get rid of it, but don’t leave us hanging in this
gray area.”
This article appears in Nov 17-23, 2004.
