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.
Devorah Halberstam
She brought the first lawsuit in the history of American jurisprudence against the gun manufacturer that supplied Ari's killer with the arsenal of weapons he used in the shooting.
Devorah was appointed by Governor George E. Pataki to serve on the first ever New York State Commission on Terrorism and then, together with him, she authored the first New York State laws to counter terrorism in 2001, which included the death penalty for terrorist crimes. To date, these laws have been used twice and terrorists have been convicted as a result of Penal Code 490.