Capital punishment in New York
In June 2004, the state's highest court ruled in "People v. LaValle" that the state's death penalty statute violated the state constitution, and New York has had an effective moratorium on capital punishment since then. Subsequent legislative attempts at fixing or replacing the statute have failed, and in 2008 then-Governor David Paterson issued an executive order disestablishing New York's death row. Legislative efforts to amend the statute have failed, and death sentences are no longer sought at the state level, though certain crimes that fall under the jurisdiction of the federal government are subject to the federal death penalty.
Felony murder and the death penalty in the United States
Faced with the objective evidence suggesting that legislatures and sentencing juries did not uniformly reject the death penalty for "all" defendants convicted of felony murder, the Court had to limit the death penalty to a discrete and narrow category of felony murder defendants based on its estimation of which category would best effectuate the goals of retribution and deterrence. The "Enmund" Court stressed that the propriety of the death penalty must be measured in light of Enmund's "own" conduct. The "Tison" Court added that historically, the individualized determination incorporates an assessment of the mental state with which the defendant commits a crime, because a more culpable mental state merits a more severe punishment. In "Woodson v. North Carolina", the Court had struck down a mandatory death penalty statute because it failed to provide for individualized consideration at sentencing. The rule fashioned by "Enmund" and "Tison" accommodated this concern by ensuring that only felony murder defendants who had a sufficiently culpable mental state received the death penalty.