George Pataki
Polls showed that the majority of New Yorkers wanted the state's death penalty laws restored. A bill to restore the death penalty passed the Legislature several years in a row, only to be vetoed by Mario Cuomo. Pataki made the issue a top priority of his and when the bill reached his desk he signed it into law in 1995. The state's Court of Appeals later ruled the death penalty unconstitutional in the form in which it was written (in the case of People v. LaValle), and the State Legislature has not passed a bill to restore it in a new form. During Pataki's 12 years as governor, not a single person was executed in New York State.
Death and culture
Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the killing of a convicted criminal by the state as punishment for crimes known as "capital crimes" or "capital offences".
Historically, the execution of criminals and political opponents was used by nearly all societies—both to punish crime and to suppress political dissent. Among democratic countries around the world, all European (except Belarus) and Latin American states, many Pacific Area states (including Australia, New Zealand and Timor Leste), and Canada have abolished capital punishment, while the majority of the United States, Guatemala, and most of the Caribbean as well as some democracies in Asia ("e.g.", Japan and India) and Africa ("e.g.", Botswana and Zambia) retain it. Among nondemocratic countries, the use of the death penalty is common but not universal.