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.
Capital punishment in New Mexico
Both Allen and Fry have filed petitions for writ of habeas corpus asserting that the death sentences in their cases are unconstitutional, both generally, and as applied to them individually. The conundrum is that if the New Mexico Supreme Court (or, later, the U.S. Supreme Court) happens to agree with Allen and Fry, their sentences will automatically become "life sentences." That is, they will both be subject to serving a term of 30 years before becoming eligible for parole. This is because, at the time each of their crimes for which they were convicted and sentenced to death New Mexico law provided only two options for sentencing in a capital offense: Life with the possibility of parole after 30 years, or Death. In 2009, the New Mexico legislature prospectively eliminated the death penalty, replacing "death" with a "true life" sentence—meaning, life without the possibility of parole. But the "ex post facto" clause of the constitution (art. 1, sec. 10) prevents the application of the life-without-the-possibility-of-parole to cases where capital crimes were committed in New Mexico before July 1, 2009.