Judge Rules U.S. Death Penalty Violates the Constitution

By Jerry Gray
New York Times

Monday, 1 July, 2002

A federal judge in New York declared the death penalty unconstitutional today, saying evidence has shown that there is an "undue risk" that a meaningful number of innocent people have been executed.

The ruling by Judge Jed S. Rakoff is the first to declare the current federal death penalty unconstitutional. And while it applies only in a pending case before Judge Rakoff, the ruling is certain to rekindle the debate over capital punishment.

The decision came in the case of two men -- Alan Quiñones and Diego Rodriguez -- who are facing trial on narcotics and murder charges and whose lawyers had argued in pretrial motions that the death penalty was unconstitutional.

Judge Rakoff, who sits on the Federal District Court in Manhattan, had told lawyers in the case in a preliminary ruling in April that he intended to declare the death penalty act unconstitutional unless prosecutors could persuade him otherwise. Today, he followed through on that earlier thought.

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