New York State's death penalty law was in effect just short of nine years before the Court of Appeals struck it down for its "coercive jury instruction" last June.
While Governor George Pataki says he wants the death penalty restored, it is not clear that the death penalty will be made legal once again in New York. Opponents of capital punishment make many arguments - that it does not deter crime, that it is immoral for the government to kill people, even that it is expensive: before it was rule unconstitutional, only .11 percent of those arrested for murder faced the death penalty, and yet the costs of administration were in excess of $250 million per year. But the most passionate argument is probably the uneven way in which the death penalty is applied.
In New York State, those people who committed murders outside New York City, and those killing white victims, were much more likely to have been sentenced to death.
Since 1995, when the death penalty was restored in New York, 6,545 arrests have been made for murder, according to statistics compiled by the Capital Defender Office.
Of these, 500 resulted in first-degree murder indictments.
Of these 500, 58 resulted in a "death notice" being filed - a notification by the prosecution that it may seek the death penalty.
Of these 58: 9 cases are still pending, 27 resulted in life without parole from a plea bargain; one defendant committed suicide in jail; one death notice was withdrawn, five were given very long sentences; and 15 so far have been given trials.
Of the 15 who have been given trials, One's sentence is still pending; one was acquitted; one was sentenced to 115 years to life; five were sentenced to life without parole
And seven defendants were sentenced to death.
All seven are still alive.
The chance of a first degree murder indictment turning into a death notice varies depending on where one is accused of doing the crime. Only six percent of the murder one indictments in New York City resulted in a death notice, compared to 23.1 percent upstate.
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Murder Arrests, Indictments, Death Notices and
Death Sentences by Region |
||||||||
Region
|
Murder 1 & 2 Arrests*
|
Murder 1 Indictments
|
Murder 1 Indictments (% of Murder 1 & 2 Arrests)
|
Death Notices
|
Death Notices (% of Murder 1 Indictments)
|
Death Sentences
|
Death Sentences (% of Murder 1 Indictments)
|
Death Sentences (% of Death Notices)
|
New York City
|
4661
|
299
|
6.4%
|
18
|
6.0%
|
2
|
0.7%
|
11.1%
|
Nassau, Rockland, Suffolk and Westchester
|
553
|
58
|
10.5%
|
4
|
6.9%
|
3
|
5.2%
|
75.0%
|
Upstate - Rest of State
|
1331
|
156
|
11.7%
|
36
|
23.1%
|
2
|
1.3%
|
5.6%
|
Total
|
6545
|
513
|
7.8%
|
58
|
11.3%
|
7
|
1.4%
|
12.1%
|
* Arrest data includes only those murders committed on or after 9/1/95 and excludes defendants under 18
|
||||||||
Source: Capital Defender Office
|
The chance of being convicted and sentenced to death is much greater in the New York suburbs than elsewhere. (Given the few death sentences one should be cautious about drawing inferences about patterns, since the three death sentences in the suburbs all come from Suffolk and from three quite sensational cases. However, the use of a death notices certainly enhances the prosecution's chances of getting a long sentence from a plea bargain).
Those accused of killing a white victim are more than twice as likely to receive a death notice than are those accused of killing only a non-white victim. Similarly they are twice as likely to go to trial and over five times as likely to receive the death sentence. These figures are statistically significant according to an analysis by David Baldus, an expert on the application of the death penalty.
Race of Victim and Race of Defendant and Capital Cases
|
|||||||
Race of Victim | Murder 1 Indictments | Death Notices (% of Murder 1 Indictments) | % of Murder 1 Indictments | Death Sentence Trials | Death Sentence Trials (% of Murder 1 Indictments) | Death Sentences |
Death Sentences (% of Murder 1 Indictments)
|
White |
152
|
30
|
19.7%
|
8
|
5.3%
|
5
|
3.3%
|
Non-White |
344
|
28
|
8.1%
|
7
|
2.0%
|
2
|
0.6%
|
Race of Defendant |
|||||||
Black |
293
|
29
|
9.9%
|
8
|
2.7%
|
3
|
1.0%
|
Non-Black |
207
|
29
|
14.0%
|
15
|
7.2%
|
7
|
3.4%
|
Source Capital Defender Office from Baldus Testimony, Modified |
265.4%
|
|
330.3%
|
Because of the disparity in the application of the death sentence upstate versus downstate, and given the demography upstate versus downstate, blacks accused of murder are much less likely to receive the death sentence.
Andrew A. Beveridge has taught sociology at Queens College since 1981, done demographic analyses for the New York Times since 1993, and provides expert testimony on a range of cases, including housing discrimination. The opinions expressed are his alone.Â
Every year at this time, wine sellers take out their $500 bottles of Bordeaux; car dealers expect a rush on $100,000 Bentleys, Porsches and Lamborghinis; real estate agents witness perfectly normal-looking people plunking down several million dollars -- in cash -- to buy an apartment. “I call them ego apartments,” one agent told the New York Sun.
It is bonus time on Wall Street, and this year in particular, there are some very happy people, from luxury suit salesmen to municipal tax collectors; the total estimated amount of bonuses(In PDF format) given out this quarter for work done in 2004 is expected to be the second biggest in history -- $15.9 billion.
Officially, the average bonus on Wall Street is $100,000. But this is an example of when statistics bear little relationship to reality. The truth is that there are a relative handful of people who work on Wall Street who get bonuses, and what they get can be astronomical.
So who are the Wall Street bonus babies?
Overwhelmingly they are involved in securities and investments, according to an analysis of Census and other data. They either help make markets, make sales, make deals, or give advice – brokers, investment bankers, traders, financial analysts, financial advisers, portfolio managers, and a few chief executive officers.
Working on Wall Street does not guarantee a high income, as most any Wall Street secretary, food service worker, or techie can attest. So can the average auditor and accountant; one-quarter of the 11,000 auditors and accountants who work in the investment and securities industries in Manhattan make $38,500 or less; the worst-paid brokers make little more than that:
Income of Financial Occupations in Investment and Securities in Manhattan
|
||||
Occupation |
Number
|
Bottom Quartile
|
Median
|
Top Quartile
|
CEO |
3,652
|
$75,000
|
$120,000
|
$347,000
|
General Manager |
2,111
|
$47,000
|
$95,300
|
$130,000
|
Financial Executive |
8,782
|
$60,000
|
$100,000
|
$347,000
|
Account, Auditor |
11,068
|
$38,500
|
$62,004
|
$100,000
|
Financial Analyst |
6,074
|
$40,000
|
$81,000
|
$321,000
|
Personal Financial Analyst |
8,289
|
$44,500
|
$80,000
|
$321,000
|
Other financial Occupation |
1,096
|
$46,000
|
$70,000
|
$321,000
|
Broker
|
42,039
|
$40,000
|
$80,000
|
$321,000
|
Based Upon 2000 Census Data |
The median income for the 23,000 highest earners on Wall Street – the ones most likely to get a year-end bonus – is so high that the U.S. Census Bureau stops counting after $347,000. For 2004, merger specialists expect to receive total compensation on average of $900,000, while commodities traders in oil and gas can expect to earn $1.3 million or more. Compare this to the median income for all other earners in the securities and investments industries – a mere $60,000. (The median income for all other workers in Manhattan was $35,000).
Bonus babies (many far from babies) are much more likely to be white, male and married, as the accompanying table makes clear. They are virtually all college graduates.
Workers in Financial Jobs in Securities and Investment Sector and Others in Manhattan
|
|||
Top Earners
|
Other Earners
|
Other Manhattan Workers
|
|
Median Income |
More Than $347,000
|
$60,000
|
$35,000
|
% White |
93
|
79
|
59
|
% Hispanic |
2
|
6
|
18
|
% Married with Spouse |
75
|
46
|
44
|
% Male |
86
|
65
|
57
|
% Born in United State |
84
|
80
|
63
|
% At Least 4 Years College |
93
|
79
|
48
|
Based Upon 2000 Census Data
|
And they almost all work in Manhattan. Pay in the financial services industry in Manhattan towers above that in all the other 3042 counties in the United States. Manhattan is the center of this whole industry. During the first quarter of 2003, the average wagespaid in that industry in Manhattan was $5,680 per week. Fairfield County in Connecticut, which includes Greenwich, was a distant second at $1,492.
The annual bonus can easily be 90 percent of the average investment banker's or bond trader's total annual income. An investment banking analyst right out of college will make about $65,000 salary, plus a $35,000 bonus, while an associate just out of business school might make $85,000 in salary and $115,000 in bonus. At the other end of the career ladder is Lloyd Blankfein, president and chief operating officer of Goldman Sachs, who made $20.1 million in 2003 -- only $600,000 of which was salary. That same year, E. Stanley O'Neal, chief executive of Merrill Lynch, made $500,000 in salary, but received a bonus of $13.5 million.
Since so much of their compensation is based upon bonuses, some of these highly paid executives and financial professionals have very volatile incomes. One year they make their base and several times that in bonuses; other years the bonuses may be much less than their base salaries, and during real down turns (such as existed in 2000 through 2002). they may face lay-offs.
The bonus-setting process is highly political and largely secret. Each group or division in a firm argues for bonuses based upon their "contributions" to earnings; then each professional argues for his or her share. So the relative size of each bonus indicates an employee's worth, while the money can affect his or her life-style immensely.
Members of the financial community are quite close mouthed when it comes to compensation, yet using the information we have we can make an educated guess about the size of an average or median bonus for a high earner in this sector. Let us assume that the 23,000 high earners split about three quarters of the $15.9 billion of bonuses. This would mean that the median bonus on Wall Street would be approximately a half a million dollars. But even here, one would expect a great deal of inequality. Some will make multi-million dollar bonuses; others will have to settle for a few hundred thousands. So these 23,000 very privileged New York workers really did find their fortune on Wall Street.
Andrew A. Beveridge has taught sociology at Queens College since 1981, done demographic analyses for the New York Times since 1993, and provides expert testimony on a range of cases, including housing discrimination. The opinions expressed are his alone.
Ask most housing advocates what one move would improve the lot of tenants in New York City, and they would answer: Repeal of the Urstadt Law. The state law, which then-Governor Nelson Rockefeller pushed through in 1971, and which Governor George Pataki strengthened in 2003, is named after Rockefeller’s housing commissioner, Charles Urstadt. For more than three decades, it has effectively handcuffed the city when it comes to dealing with the main problems facing housing here -- rents and evictions.
That is because the law largely took control of rent regulation out of the hands of the city government and gave it to the state legislature. The legislature, a body with many representatives from upstate districts that have few renters, has weakened rent regulation laws year after year. Changes in the rent regulation laws have resulted in what some estimate to be more than 100,000 rent stabilized apartments in New York City becoming “decontrolled” – the rents hiked up to whatever the landlord wants to charge.
Advocates say repealing the Urstadt Law would give the city the power to keep rents affordable.
“In my mind, it is the only way to reverse the crippling of the rent and eviction protections that we’ve seen at the hands of the state legislature,” said Kenny Schaeffer, vice chair of the Metropolitan Council on Housing. “Right now, the City Council’s hands are tied. The rent stabilization laws have had so many holes poked in them by the state legislature that they’re dying a death of a thousand cuts.”
Revoking the city’s control over rent laws was a strategic political move Rockefeller made to help in his re-election campaign, recalled Michael McKee, associate director of Tenants and Neighbors. As a result, it led to four sets of laws that fill hundreds of pages noted for their complexity, if not incomprehensibility.
There are state rent control laws and city rent control laws, state rent stabilization laws and city rent stabilization laws. Over the years, these have been revised and sometimes rewritten. Some of the laws are specific to New York City while others apply to smaller cities. The laws have spawned thousands of pages of commentary and doubtless assured the employment of many attorneys, legal journalists and, yes, even housing advocates. It takes years to figure out just what the different laws say and how they are applied in practice
Reclaiming home rule over rents and evictions would make understanding those laws easier, McKee said, in addition to making housing advocates’ work less onerous.
“We have a rent regulation system that makes no sense at all,” McKee said. “It’s a patchwork quilt that no one understands.”
Repealing the Urstadt Law would not create a “paradise” for tenants, McKee said, but would help them be more effective.
“Tenants will still have to organize and put pressure” on elected officials, McKee said. “But at least we won’t have to fight a two-front war. Especially in years where the (state’s and city’s) laws sunset at the same time. From an organizers point of view it’s a nightmare. People say, â€I thought the laws just got renewed, why do I have to go to Albany?’”
Political considerations could make a repeal of the Urstadt Laws possible this year, Schaeffer said. Record homelessness, high rents and the continued loss of rent regulated apartments have put affordable housing firmly on the political agenda and the mayoral election will only increase the pressure for solutions.
At the same time, Democrats scored significant victories in last November’s elections to diminish the Republican majority in the State Senate. Those victories have led Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno to compromise more readily on progressive issues. A higher minimum wage and less draconian drug crime punishments are some of the results of the new political realities for Bruno.
While Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said in the past he supports a repeal of the Urstadt Law, McKee noted that he was silent when Pataki strengthened the law in 2003. Tenants have not forgotten, he said.
“Even when Pataki pushed, there wasn’t a squawk from the mayor, he didn’t say a word,” McKee said. “And we are fed up with this posturing in City Hall.”
![]() People gather at City Hall February 2 in support of affordable housing and in protest of the Urstadt Law. |
A rally planned for Feb. 2 is meant to send that message loudly and clearly to politicians. The rally on Brooklyn Bridge will call attention to affordable housing, and specifically three actions that would allow the city to address the problem: Making sure that a significant portion of Battery Park Authority funds actually finance affordable housing construction as originally intended; Persuading the city to adopt inclusionary zoning that would allow developers to build higher density developments in return for setting aside a percentage of the units for affordable housing; And calling for a repeal of the Urstadt Law.
Joe Lamport is the assistant director of the City-Wide Task Force on Housing Court, a coalition of community housing organizations.