NEW YORK: Appeal Brings New Focus on Death Penalty Law

To the defense, James F. Cahill 3rd is a man of "broken mind and spirit" who deserves to live. He killed his wife, Jill, with cyanide in 1998, as she recovered from being beaten by him with a baseball bat, and his lawyers suggest he did so because he was distraught over the breakup of his marriage.

To the prosecution, he is a man who deserves the sentence of death by lethal injection imposed by a Syracuse jury in 1999. Prosecutors say he killed his wife to stop her from testifying against him in an assault case stemming from the baseball bat attack 6 months earlier. "His own fate was sealed," say prosecution arguments, "when he procured cyanide, disguised himself as a hospital worker, crept into his wife's room, forced his wife's mouth open and jammed the poison down her throat."

Those conflicting views are at the center of a death penalty appeal that arrives for arguments Monday at the state's highest court, the Court of Appeals. The case is just the 2nd in which the court is reviewing a death sentence under New York's 1995 capital punishment law.

The appeal is being watched closely because the court has yet to rule on broad legal questions, like whether the law violates the state Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The court overturned the state's 1st death penalty sentence last year, but the ruling was narrowly constructed. "In the last case, the court did not decide the fundamental challenges to the death penalty," said Ronald J. Tabak, a New York death penalty lawyer. "Until they do, the constitutionality of the statute will remain in doubt."

As in all of the 6 death penalty cases working their way to the court here, hundreds of pages of legal arguments provide the judges in Mr. Cahill's case with material for either the narrowest or the broadest possible decision. A ruling is not expected for some time.

Mr. Cahill's lawyers at the state's Capital Defender Office have made arguments that sympathetic judges could use to strike down all or part of the law. One such claim attacks a provision of the 1995 law. It directs judges to tell juries that if they are deadlocked on whether the punishment should be death or life without parole, the judge will impose a life sentence with a minimum of 20 to 25 years that must be served.

Defense lawyers say the provision coerces juries to reach a decision, because it suggests that the defendant may one day be freed on parole. Prosecutors say the provision benefits defendants by letting jurors know that a judge can impose a more lenient sentence.

A friend-of-the-court brief emphasizes a different sweeping attack on the law. Written by a retired Court of Appeals judge, Stewart F. Hancock Jr., it argues that the court should strike down the death penalty law because it is enforced unevenly. The brief, written on behalf of People Against the Death Penalty and other groups, cites evidence that blacks are sentenced to death disproportionately and studies that show upstate prosecutors in New York seek death more often than downstate prosecutors. Mr. Cahill, 43, is white.

But the defense lawyers have also presented many arguments that could lay the groundwork for another narrow ruling. They argue that Mr. Cahill was denied a fair trial because a flood of news coverage in central New York prejudiced jurors against him, and they say he was wrongly denied the chance to make a last plea for mercy, as is permitted in some states. They say the judge improperly met with the jury forewoman, after a brief illness caused her to spend a night during the deliberations at the same hospital where Mrs. Cahill was killed.

The defense also argues that the prosecution was flawed because Mr. Cahill was charged with killing his wife "for the purpose" of preventing her from testifying against him in the assault case. At his trial, Mr. Cahill's lawyers argued that the poisoning may well have been provoked instead by his distress at the breakup of his marriage.

The prosecutors answer every claim, saying Mr. Cahill is "purposely ignoring the fact that he is guilty of a brutal murder."

Death penalty lawyers say Mr. Cahill's defense team is focusing on the narrow arguments because courts usually try to decide cases on narrow grounds before tackling constitutional issues. The court and its chief judge, Judith S. Kaye, are known for trying to reach consensus, and their technical rulings help mute philosophical differences on controversial questions like capital punishment.

But some prosecutors say they are awaiting a definitive decision.

"We would certainly like to know whether or not the statute is constitutional," said Michael A. Arcuri, the district attorney in Oneida County and president of the New York State District Attorneys Association. "We could be out there trying these cases and spending millions of dollars and ultimately find out the statute is deemed unconstitutional."