Putnam District Attorney Wright Calls for Changes in Death Penalty Statute

Putnam District Attorney Kevin Wright, president-elect of the District Attorney’s Association of the State of New York, has called for a change to New York’s death penalty statute in light of the murder of a federal prosecutor whose body was found early on December 4th in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Wright said it was wrong that in New York, the murder of a prosecutor doesn’t make a defendant eligible for a death sentence just the same as the statute does for the murders of police, judges or witnesses.

Wright called it an insult to New York’s skilled professional prosecutors that the state’s death penalty statute treats a prosecutor’s murder with less dignity and deterring effect than a witness, judge or police officer murdered in similar circumstances. District Attorney Wright said he has written to Governor Pataki, Senate Majority Leader Bruno and Assembly Speaker Silver asking for action to amend the law.

Mr. Wright said that prosecutors were originally included along with judges, police and witnesses as a class of death penalty eligible murders during the negotiations for the enactment of New York’s death penalty statute, but that during negotiations prosecutors were removed as a class of persons in part because of their strong advocacy for bringing back a death penalty, which was finally enacted into law in March of 1995.

The District Attorney said that although the murder of a prosecutor may be a less frequent occurrence in this country than that of a police officer, witness or even a judge, it was nonetheless as chilling an attack on the very foundations of our legal system and should be treated as an equally heinous crime by society.

Wright said he hoped that amendment of New York Penal. Law §125.27 Murder in the first degree could be swiftly accomplished and that he had proposed a draft off the amended statute’s language to the Governor, Senate and Assembly leaders.