Joseph Bruno
Bruno, along with Governor George Pataki and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, was instrumental in returning the death penalty to New York State in 1995. The New York Court of Appeals (the highest state court in New York) later found the law to be unconstitutional because it gave jurors deadlocked between life without parole and execution no choice but to give eligibility for parole after 25 years; the Court of Appeals feared that jurors faced with this choice would unfairly lean toward a death sentence. In the 10 years after the law was passed, New York's crime rate plummeted without ever seeing an execution, perhaps weakening public support for the death penalty. Silver let the law die in 2005 without much debate.
Capital punishment by the United States federal government
The use of the federal death penalty increased in the 2000s, with the number of those sentenced to death federally climbing from 18 to 50 by 2007. Most such sentences were given in states which have active death state penalty statutes, with the largest number of federal death sentences handed down in Texas. However U.S. attorneys increasingly began pursuing death sentences in states with no state death penalties and/or with inactive state death penalties. In federal trials, courts may exclude jurors who are opposed to the death penalty, even in trials taking place in non-death penalty states. In 2004 Brigham stated that due to an increase of federal death penalty verdicts in the preceding decade, "some fear a "federalization" of the death penalty is taking place".