New York (state)
Capital punishment was reintroduced in 1995 under the Pataki administration, but the statute was declared unconstitutional in 2004, when the New York Court of Appeals ruled in "People v. LaValle" that it violated the state constitution. The remaining death sentence was commuted by the court to life imprisonment in 2007, in "People v. John Taylor", and the death row was disestablished in 2008, under executive order from Governor Paterson. No execution has taken place in New York since 1963. 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.
Alfred P. Southwick
After a series of botched hangings in the United States there was mounting criticism of this form of capital punishment and the death penalty in general. In 1886 newly elected New York State governor David B. Hill set up a three-member death penalty commission to find a more humane form of execution. The committee included Southwick, human rights advocate and reformer Elbridge Thomas Gerry, and New York lawyer and politician Matthew Hale. They explored many forms of execution and in 1888 recommended electrocution using Southwick's electric chair idea with metal conductors attached to the condemned person's head and feet. Based on their advice the first law allowing the use of electrocution went into effect in New York State on January 1, 1889. Development of Southwicks idea into a working device was turned over to the New York Medico-Legal Society.