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 In 1965, the State of New York repealed the death penalty, except for cases involving the murder of a police officer. Although the legislature never fully repealed the death penalty statute, and the state even expanded it in 1995, there were no further executions because of rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972 and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.
New Jersey Department of Corrections
Prior to the 2007 repeal of the death penalty, the death row for men was in the Capital Sentence Unit (CSU) in the New Jersey State Prison. The same prison housed the death chamber, and the first death by electrocution occurred on December 11, 1907. This unit was first established in 1907. On December 17, 2007, Governor Jon Corzine signed a bill in which the New Jersey General Assembly passed which abolishes the death penalty, New Jersey became the first state to legislatively eliminate capital punishment since 1965. The day prior, December 16, 2007, Governor Corzine commuted the death sentences of the remaining eight men on death row to "life imprisonment without parole".