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.
Gary Lee Sampson
Although the United States has a federal "death row" at the United States Penitentiary, Terre Haute, in Indiana (where federal death row inmates are executed), U.S. District Judge Mark L. Wolf of the U.S. District Court in Boston ordered that Sampson be executed in New Hampshire. However, before the execution could take place, Judge Wolf ordered a new sentencing trial for Sampson.