People v. LaValle
People v. LaValle, 3 N.Y.3d 88 (2004), was a landmark decision by the New York Court of Appeals, the highest court in the U.S. state of New York, in which the court ruled that the state's death penalty statute was unconstitutional because of the statute's direction on how the jury was to be instructed in case of deadlock. New York has since been without the death penalty, as the law has not been amended.
Capital punishment in New York
In the July 1972 decision in "Furman v. Georgia", the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the existing death penalty procedures across the United States. The moratorium lasted until 1976, when the Court ruled in "Gregg v. Georgia" that states could resume capital punishment under reworked statutes.