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NEW YORK, NY December 16, 2004 —The fate of New York’s death penalty is now in the hands of the State Assembly. The law was struck down in June on a technicality. Governor Pataki and Senate Republicans want to fix the law quickly so it's back on the books. But Assembly Democrats are taking a closer look. Yesterday they held their first in a series of public hearings. WNYC's Beth Fertig has more.

New York’s death penalty was signed into law by Governor Pataki in 1995. Since then seven people have been sentenced to death but not a single person has been executed. There are estimates the law has cost the state and its counties 170 million dollars.

So when the law was declared unconstitutional this year, because of a section dealing with instructions to jurors, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver – who supports the death penalty - said it was time for a second look. That energized opponents of capital punishment.

KACZYNSKI: Half the Assembly, the current assembly was not in office when this issue was voted on.

David Kaczynski is executive director of New Yorkers Against the Death Penalty. He’s also the brother of convicted Unabomber Theodore Kacynski. Ten years ago voters supported the death penalty but he thinks views are shifting.

KACZYNSKI: I think we’re certainly seeing a change in public opinion probably based on the number of exonerations. Even in New York we’ve had numbers of people sentenced to long prison sentences for murder ultimately found to be innocent.

Kaczynski attended yesterday's Assembly hearing in midtown Manhattan. He was among about 200 observers. Most were opponents of the death penalty, and many wore yellow buttons with the words "Execute Justice Not People." One opponent of capital punishment who testified was attorney Barry Scheck of the Innocence Project at Cardozo Law School. He noted that DNA testing has exonerated 153 people, nationally, in the past decade - including 14 who were on death row.

SCHECK: Think about the Central Park jogger case. Cause we all remember it. Just imagine if that poor young woman had died. And she almost did. Is there any question that those young men would have gotten the death sentence? They were innocent. It was false confessions.

Sheck called for videotaping confessions and investing more money into crime labs. Changes like these were also embraced by Robert Blecker – a professor at New York Law School who was one of the few supporters of the death penalty to address the Assembly hearing. Blecker has studied murderers in prison. He disputed those who say the death penalty is immoral because of its capacity for a wrongful conviction.

BLECKER: It’s a terrible, terrible injustice. But it's also a terrible injustice when I go to death row in Florida and I see Danny Rolling, the Ninja killer, Gainseville Killer, he used to stalk young females. And I see Danny Rolling from 15 feet away lying in bed reading a book with his reading glasses propped on his nose on Florida's death row fully into life, 12 years later. And something deep inside me says 'why aren’t you dead?'

Yesterday's hearing covered many of the traditional moral arguments, along with questions about whether minorities are disproportionately affected by the death penalty. But unlike 10 years ago, when Albany leaders supported the death penalty only to be blocked by Governor Mario Cuomo, this time there's a Republican governor squaring off against a potentially divided Assembly. Political observers say the Democrat-controlled body is split with a sizeable contingent on the fence.

Kate Lowenstein says she's glad the Assembly is taking a breather. She’s the daughter of the former Congressman Al Lowenstein, who was murdered in New York City in 1980.

LOWENSTEIN: This pause that was inflicted on them, they’re taking their time to really look at it, is this worth it, good use of our policy, is it a good use of our resources.

The Assembly will hold two more hearings on the death penalty next month, in Albany and in New York City. For WNYC I'm Beth Fertig.