THE COURT of Appeals last month decided the first full appeal of a death sentence imposed under the 1995 statute that reauthorized capital punishment in New York, People v. Harris. The Court reversed the death sentence due to infirmities in the statute’s plea provisions at the time of trial and, thus, did not find it necessary to reach the argument that the death penalty scheme violates the state constitution’s cruel and unusual punishment clause.
We also report on Firth v. State of New York in which the Court applied its single publication rule to repeated “hits” on the state’s Web site for Statute of Limitations purposes and on People v. Sanchez, which provoked an unusual 4-3 split in the Court on the issue of the distinction between intentional and depraved indifference murder.
