Salon.com News | The executioner's swan song: "Last June, New York's highest court struck down a provision of the state's death penalty statute as unconstitutional. The provision required trial courts to instruct jurors in capital cases that if they failed to unanimously agree on a penalty of either life imprisonment or death, the court would set a sentence of life with the possibility of parole. In People vs. Stephen LaValle, the Court of Appeals concluded that jurors might sentence a defendant to die not because they thought he deserved it, but because they feared he might someday go free. It was up to the state Legislature to fix the law in order to reinstate the death penalty. On Tuesday, the Codes Committee of the General Assembly chose not to.

What happened in Albany was historic. At least for this year, New York has unburdened itself of the decision on capital punishment, and opponents of the death penalty hope it signals a nationwide trend. "

(Via Salon.)