Sen. Ball is pandering to sorrow-filled New Yorkers and a media wolfpack. From 1995-2004, not a single person convicted and sentenced under the death penalty statue was executed. Today, all former death row inmates remain imprisoned for the rest of their natural lives.

The wrongful execution by the State of an innocent person can never be undone.

Murder rates are unaffected by the absence or presence of a death penalty statute. Few murders are premediated and those who plan murders are not rational actors. They are psychopathic and sociopathic personalities who do not care a whit about the rules of our society. Some others act out of a misplaced passion that suspends rational thinking about the consequences of their actions.

The death penalty is a blood vengence that neither serves the memory of murder victims nor deter future murders.