Remarks by Governor Mario M. Cuomo

Rally Against the Death Penalty

Sponsored by the New York Society for Ethical Culture and the New York City Civil Liberties Union

Manhattan, New York

Sunday, January 29, 1995

350 people attending

Thank you for the invitation. It is one of the first I have received in my new position. As you may have heard, last November I was elected a private citizen.

This will not take very long. The subject is too well known to need much elaboration. I'm [hearing from some analysts] that my stance on the death penalty had a lot to do with the outcome of that race last fall.

Perhaps. But whether or not it did, I will forever be grateful for 12 years of opportunity to influence this great state's action on this profoundly significant issue.

It was one of the most important things I could do,.

It is clear to me, as it is to you, that in many ways this is a troubling time -- a time when the public demand for capital punishment has grown so that just mentioning the likelihood of its passage brought the loudest and most sustained applause during the new govenor's inaugural address.

It is a time when it is easy for those of us on the other side to feel alone, isolated in our positions -- somehow inappropriate.

At moments like this one, it is important for good people like yourselves to come together and to remind yourselves that the darker it gets, the more we need to struggle to light every candle we can.

The universe moves gradually toward greater integrity and truth--but it moves in fits and starts. Sometimes we pause in our progress or even slip backward for a while... It is for us to try to reverse the direction. It will happen eventually.

If we struggle hard enough, it will happen sooner and so we are here today, struggling harder.

What is it exactly that we're up against, as we enter this difficult new phase in the battle to keep our high level of civility and to keep capital punishment out of New York?

In the end, I believe, it is not a deep desire for the death penalty per se--but the universal longing for a world free of uncertainty and fear.

New Yorkers and Americans everywhere are appalled by the madness created by drugs, by the calculated murders committed by 12 year-olds, by the audacious atrocity of the crimes they hear about or may even have seen with their own eyes.

When it appears to the people that crime is rampant, when the criminal seems immune from adequate punishment, or even apprehension, when nothing else appears to be working...no one should be surprised if the people demand the ultimate penalty....

Surely we need to respond more effectively to the new violence. Of course we want our criminals justice system as efficient as possible.

But there is no reason to believe that returning to the machinery of death will be any wiser now than it was at all the times in the past when we had it, used it, regretted it, and discarded it--or that it will work any better in this country than in all the other nations of the western world, who have long since rejected it....

There are better answers than the death penalty. Subtler and more enlightened ones that create new avenues to dignity for children, that create new hope, more jobs, better education, more evidence of our intelligent concern and our willingness to help.

There even exist tougher punishments we could choose to apply--like life in prison without parole...

We should take courage from all the great Americans who have found the truth before it was fashionable. We should have faith in Lincoln's promise that right will, in the end, make might.

And to that end, we should continue to raise our voices--louder if we have to--speeding the time when civility replaces harshness, intelligence overwhelms anger, and we return to the path upward.

Thank you.