PAST ARTICLES AND EDITORIAL BOARDS
Death-Defying Feats: State Constitutional Challenges To New
York's Death Penalty
Mary R. Falk & Eve Cary
4 J.L. & Pol'y 161 (1995)
Professors Falk and Cary have composed a "call for research" regarding New York's recent death penalty statute. Noting that recent U.S. Supreme Court "deregulation" of capital punishment has all but precluded effective federal constitutional challenges (with two notable exceptions), the authors argue that myriad state constitutional challenges would provide the greatest potential for blocking enactment of the statute.

To highlight the importance of state constitutional challenges in this area, the authors provide a survey of major U.S. Supreme Court threshold issues on the constitutionality of capital punishment since Furman v. Georgia, concluding that the federal courts have become increasingly unwilling to oversee the administration of death penalty cases. Additionally, the authors discuss the methodology and history of New York's state constitutional jurisprudence, and examine how other states have approached state constitutional challenges to the death penalty.

Finally the authors propose specific state constitutional challenges to New York's death penalty. Among the strategies proposed are per se death penalty challenges under state constitutional provisions, including excessive punishment, due process, equal treatment and challenges to specific provisions of New York's statute.