WXXI: Senate Republicans Press for Death Penalty (2007-05-22)

On the day of the annual police memorial service to honor officers who died in the line of duty, Senate Republicans kept up the pressure to reinstate the death penalty in New York for cop killers.

Republican Senators were joined at a news conference by family members of some of the police officers who died last year, and who were to be honored at a ceremony at the State Capitol.

Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno says Governor Eliot Spitzer, who supports reinstating the death penalty for cop killers, should use his powers of persuasion to convince Assembly Democrats to pass the bill.

"I'm asking the governor to use the bully pulpit," Bruno said.

Governor Spitzer and Senator Bruno both spoke at the police memorial ceremony, where the names of seven officers who died in 2006 were added to the wall. Five more have been killed so far in 2007. But both men left politics out of their speeches.

One day earlier, at a leader's meeting, the death penalty bill was discussed. Governor Spitzer stated his support for capital punishment for the murder of a police officer or acts of terrorism.

"I believe it is a just penalty and sanction," Spitzer said.

But several members of the leadership of the Assembly Democrats now oppose the measure. Assembly Codes Committee Chair Joe Lentol, who voted for reinstating the death penalty in 1995, says he's had a change of heart.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver said that he, too had voted for the death penalty a dozen years ago, but now feels differently. The Speaker says one of his concerns is the millions of dollars the state has spent on defense costs, while not a single person has been executed.

"It's time to focus someplace else," Silver said.

In 2004, the state's highest court, the Court of Appeals struck down a key provision of the state's death penalty law, so there is currently no capital punishment statute on the books.

Senate Republicans say if Speaker Silver, Assemblyman Lentol and others put their personal preferences aside and let the bill come to the floor of the Assembly for a vote, it would likely pass.