The Death Penalty in the OSCE Area Moratorium There is no moratorium on executions in place at the federal level in the United States, and responsibilities not vested in the Federal Government are reserved for state governments. Kansas and New Hampshire, in which legislation permits the imposition of the death penalty, have not imposed it in the past 30 years. Neither Colorado, Idaho, Nebraska, Oregon, Pennsylvania or Wyoming, which also have capital punishment laws in effect, has sentenced anyone to death in the past 10 years.46 While New York has a capital statute, the New York State Court of Appeals has held that a portion of the state’s death penalty sentencing statute (CPL 400.27) is unconstitutional (People v. Taylor, 9 N.Y.3d 129 [2007]). As a result, no defendants may be sentenced to death until the legislature corrects the errors in this statute. New Mexico has repealed its capital statute, but only for murders committed after 1 July 2009.47 A de facto moratorium on executions exists in four states – California, Maryland, Kentucky and Nebraska – as a result of lethal injection issues. In Nebraska, executions were originally halted when, on 8 February 2008, electrocution was ruled unconstitutional by the state’s Supreme Court. Despite the fact that the Nebraska Legislature approved the use of lethal injection in 2009, executions remain halted because the new lethal injection law is currently being challenged in the courts. New Mexico repealed the death penalty for offenses committed after 1 July 2009. Two previously sentenced inmates remain under sentence of death, and the state is pursing the death penalty in the case of one person who is currently on trial.48 On 22 June 2011, U.S. District Judge Jose E. Martinez ruled that the method by which Florida courts hand down death sentences was unconstitutional, marking the first time a judge in Florida had overturned a death sentence under the 2002 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Ring v. Arizona, in which the Court ruled that the defendant had the right to have a jury, rather than a judge, decide on the existence of an aggravating factor that might be considered in handing down a death sentence.49 46  “Almost Half of U.S. Jurisdictions Have Had No Executions in 10 Years”, Death Penalty Information Center, 5 September 2011, <http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/almost-half-us-jurisdictions-have-had-no-executions-10-years>. 47  Response to the ODIHR questionnaire on the death penalty from the Unites States Department of State, received on 11 September 2011., op. cit., note 43. 48  Ibid. 49  “Miami federal judge rules Florida’s death penalty unconstitutional”, Miami Herald, 22 June 2011, <http://www. miamiherald.com/2011/06/22/2279518/miami-federal-judge-floridas-death.html>. 11