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.
Marvin Gabrion
The case received national attention both for the brutality of the crime and for the controversial sentence. The crime was committed in Michigan, which does not have the death penalty, but prosecutors in federal court were able to seek a death sentence because the murder took place on federal land. Gabrion is the first person in the United States to receive the death penalty for a crime committed in a non-death penalty state since federal capital punishment was reinstated in 1988 as well as the first person to be sentenced to death in the state of Michigan since 1937.