the New York State Republican-led Senate passed a bill (S.4632)...

the New York State Republican-led Senate passed a bill (S.4632), sponsored by Senator Dale Volker (R-C-I, Depew), that would amend the state’s death penalty law to fix a provision that was ruled invalid by the state Court of Appeals on June 24, 2004 (see).
The bill would change the way juries are instructed when considering a possible death sentence.
But the Democrat-led Assembly doesn't plan to approve the measure, so capital punishment won't become law this session, which is scheduled to end today. In 2004, the Court of Appeals, in the case of Stephen LaValle, overturned death penalty sentences in New York State, saying that judges were improperly required to instruct jurors in capital cases that if they deadlocked and failed to reach a verdict during the penalty phase of a trial, the judge would impose a sentence that would leave the defendant eligible for parole after 20 to 25 years. "The deadlock instruction gives rise to an unconstitutionally palpable risk that one or more jurors who cannot bear the thought that a defendant may walk the streets again ... will join jurors favoring death in order to avoid the deadlock sentence," wrote Judge George Bundy Smith for the majority of the court. The new bill would require that in addition to capital punishment or life in prison without parole, juries would be given a 3rd option of imposing a sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole when sentencing convicted murderers. Also, the bill requires that, if a jury is deadlocked, a sentence of life without parole would be imposed, and juries would be told of that provision before sentencing. All pending capital cases, as well as crimes committed prior to the effective date of any change in the law, would be affected by the changes included in this bill.