History of Capital Punishment in New York.

1778-1887: hanging
1888-1964: electrocution
1965-1973: no death penalty
1974-1977: electrocution
1978-1994: no death penalty
1995-present: lethal injection

(Except, isn’t it in limbo somehow now?)

From the Bureau of Justice website:

In 2005, 60 persons in 16 States were executed — 19 in Texas; 5 each in Indiana, Missouri, and North Carolina; 4 each in Ohio, Alabama, and Oklahoma; 3 each in Georgia, and South Carolina; 2 in California; and 1 each in Connecticut, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Maryland, and Mississippi.

Of persons executed in 2005:

– 41 were white
– 19 were black

Fifty-nine men and one woman were executed in 2005.
Lethal injection accounted for all of the executions.
Thirty-eight States and the Federal government in 2005 had capital statutes.

The map was courtesy of http://encarta.msn.com.

(Forgive me, I feel I must out myself. As strongly as I feel that murderers must be caught and imprisoned, I am against capital punishment. Even though, I too, think that some people should not be on the planet.)

These are my notes from a dig at a golf course. One of the Cold Case CIs (criminal informant) told them they’d find a body at this golf course.

“There’s two K9 dogs, a dozen guys, a couple of trailers, a grill is set up to feed everyone a meal, an investigator for the DA is here. We’ve gone pretty far into the course to start looking for the body, but Vito says he’d be amazed if they find a body here. ‘They’re lazy pricks,’ he says. Murderers usually don’t make much of an effort, they don’t carry bodies far, or dig their graves too deep. There’s the fairly constant pop of golf balls being hit on the fairway [later one will hit and break the back windshield of the guy who brought the ground penetrating radar machine].

The cadaver dog Storm is into the dig, he keeps getting excited, his handler says, ‘Easy.’ To me he says, ‘You don’t want them scratching one of them. Bomb Squad dogs sit down when they find something [smart]. Cadaver dogs go mental.’“

When I was first researching this book I spent a few weeks down at the Municipal Library reading NYPD’s Annual Reports going all the way back. I wrote down various facts that stood out for me, like this, which I did not put in the book:

From the 1887 Annual Report: 71 fetuses found, 82 dead infants found, 34 still-born children found, 246 people drowned, 11 human bones found.

I mean good God. You can see how that might stand out. I’m not sure what is meant by “found.” On the street? I guess it could mean anywhere. Anyway, harsh times. And I’m guessing there were a lot more drownings back then because people actually swam in the Hudson and East Rivers.

I go to the Cold Case Center [link I had is broken] to see which cold cases made the news. It’s interesting to browse the titles of the articles alone, and to see which parts of the country are active. Actually, it’s interesting how many there are daily, compared to two years ago, when I first discovered the site.