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.
Glossip v. Gross
4) "Most places within the United States have abandoned its use": Beside being cruel, Breyer believed the death penalty is also unusual because it has become rare. Noting that 41 states had the death penalty before the Court blocked it in 1972, now there are 31, and only three, Texas, Missouri, and Florida, account for 80% of executions. After listing execution statistics, Breyer next considered polling data and an American Law Institute report. Breyer finally considered the death penalty as even more unusual by looking at a vote by the United Nations General Assembly, reports by the International Commission Against the Death Penalty and Amnesty International statistics.