Eddie Lee Mays
Mays would become the last person to be executed by "Old Sparky", New York State's electric chair at Sing Sing prison. The State Electrician was Dow Hover. The electric chair had been the sole method of execution in the State since 1890 (hanging had been abolished in 1888). In 1965, the State of New York repealed the death penalty, except for cases involving the murder of a police officer. Although the legislature never fully repealed the death penalty statute, and the state even expanded it in 1995, there were no further executions because of rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972 and the New York Court of Appeals in 2004.
Jon Corzine
Corzine, a death penalty opponent, as governor supported and presided over abolition of capital punishment in New Jersey and replacing it with life imprisonment. After the legislature passed and he signed it into law, New Jersey became the first state to legislatively eliminate capital punishment since 1965. Although the bill was not passed until late in 2007, New Jersey had not executed any criminals since 1963. Because the penalty was never used and often reversed upon appeal, it was viewed as a form of extended suffering for victims' families by some supporters of its abolition. Before the enactment of the new law, he commuted the death sentences of all death row inmates to life in prison. Corzine also has supported early New Jersey efforts at gun control.