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 in Washington (state)
Support for the death penalty in the United States is at historic lows. In a 2017 end of the year report, the Death Penalty Information Center reported that public support of the death penalty reached 45 year lows. In Washington state, Jay Inslee's decision to institute a moratorium on capital punishment did not negatively impact his support among voters, as evidenced by the fact that he won the 2016 gubernatorial race (54.4%) by a larger margin than the 2012 race (51.5%).the