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 In 1965, the State of New York repealed the death penalty, except for cases involving the murder of a police officer. Although the legislature never fully repealed the death penalty statute, and the state even expanded it in 1995, there were no further executions because of rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972 and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.
Capital punishment in New York
In the 2005 Democratic primary for Manhattan District Attorney, incumbent Robert Morgenthau's successful campaign produced television advertisements criticizing opponent Leslie Crocker Snyder, a prosecutor who had stated in her autobiography that in one case, she would have been willing to give a lethal injection to a defendant herself, saying Snyder was "Wrong on the Death Penalty, Wrong for Manhattan". The New York Times endorsed Snyder but expressed concern about her support for the death penalty. For the duration of Morgenthau's tenure as Manhattan District Attorney, he never once sought the death penalty in the period it was legal in New York.