LENTOL'S LAMENT 
In the Albany Times Union, Democratic Queens Assemblyman Joseph R. Lentol offers an engaging look at the recent history of New York’s troubled death penalty statute — signed into law by Governor George Pataki in 1995. The pol makes an impassioned plea why it shouldn’t be used in the last holdover capital punishment case in the New York court system since the Court of Appeals issued a moratorium in 2004. In the so-called “Wendy’s Massacre” case, Queens prosecutors crafted a unique provision so that the trial judge, Stephen W. Fisher, could avoid the constitutional malady acknowledged by the Court of Appeals — that flawed jury instructions could bias New York juries in favor of a death sentence. One of the two defendants was sentenced to death; oral arguments in the Court of Appeals hearing begin next month. –J.S.

 
FOR LOVE OR FOR MONEY
The Daily News reports on an upcoming lawsuit by the families of passengers who died on United Airlines Flight 93, the hijacked 9/11 plane that crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pa. after passengers staged an uprising. The families — who rejected a federal compensation fund and are suing the airline — want Southern District Judge Alvin Hellerstein to allow the 31-minute cockpit voice recording to be played for jurors at an upcoming trial, rather than using an edited transcript. Said plaintiff Carole O'Hare, the mother of victim Hilda Marcin: "This heroic effort and ultimate sacrifice is conveyed in the cockpit voice recording, and the transcript is a poor substitute for the horror and terror they endured in the last 30 minutes of their lives." –J.S.

 
"SOMETHING HAS GONE HORRIBLY AWRY"
Expanding on an item we wrote about on Monday, The Huffington Post ran a long piece Wednesday examining the ethical and constitutional implications of the appeal of two men found guilty of supporting terrorism. Mohammed Hossain and Yassin Aref were convicted for participating in an FBI sting operation that centered on a fake assassination plot, and their appeal concerns secret legal papers that the prosecution filed with the judge, which allegedly prove the defendants were illegally surveilled. Concludes the author: “Now, it's a pretty basic rule that the government is not allowed to prosecute you for a crime based on evidence it gathered illegally, like evidence obtained through warrantless surveillance that is not based on probable cause. Yet it is quite possible that a number of criminal prosecutions in the past few years have been tainted by illegal surveillance by the NSA. . . . The government's not telling. Who knows what they are saying in their secret papers? In this case, not even the judge is telling. Secret decisions and prosecutions that may be based on illegal evidence are not how American criminal trials run. Period. Something has gone horribly awry.” –J.S.

 
(HEAD)ING TO TRIAL
Do you have enough evidence to arrest a murder suspect when the head of the victim is found in his car trunk and other remains are found in trash cans in the basement of his mother’s house? Apparently not for William Keahon, counsel for Evan Marshall, 32, who was arrested last August in the killing of retired schoolteacher Denice Fox in Glen Cove, N.Y. According to Newsday, Keahon recently tried to persuade Nassau County Court Judge Richard LaPera that because Marshall had been living in a drug rehab facility after moving out of his mother's home, police had no reason to suspect him as the murderer. (This despite the fact that police found Marshall's ID cards in his mother's house and that the home’s answering machine said Marshall lived there.) LaPera wasn’t having it: in a Tuesday ruling he substantiated the arrest and set the stage for jury selection in the trial to begin next week. –J.S.

 
GENERIC DRUG PROGRAM DELAYED 
A Suffolk County Supreme Court judge — though we never learn which judge (way to go, Newsday) — on Wednesday delayed the implementation of a generic prescription drug program advocates say would save taxpayers millions each year by offering discounts to county employees and thousands of retirees. The mystery judge temporarily agreed with the Association of Municipal Employees Union, which opposed the rollout over concerns the program was sneakily introduced and with few details made public. "The members of the Suffolk Coalition of Public Employees, who worked tirelessly on behalf of all Suffolk County employees, will not be bullied by anyone who tries to circumvent the democratic process," said Cheryl Felice, president of the union’s Suffolk branch. Countered Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy: “It's mind-boggling the leadership is looking to stop a program that will save their own members money and county taxpayers up to $12 million a year.” –J.S.

 
COKED-UP (AND LOCKED UP) KIDS
Metro reports that a coalition sent an open letter to Gov. Eliot Spitzer's New York State Commission on Sentencing Reform yesterday, imploring it to keep its promise to reexamine the state's antiquated Rockefeller drug laws. The Real Reform Coalition is asking the commission to restore judicial discretion in drug cases rather than following mandatory minimum guidelines; they're also asking for a reduction in drug offense sentences, retroactive "relief sentencing" for inmates convicted under the Rockefeller laws, and an increased number of treatment programs. Spitzer's organization will be holding a closed meeting this week and publicly issuing its recommendations in October; the final report is due in March 2008. Coalition member Cheri O'Donoghue, whose 21-year-old son Ashley received a seven-to-21-year sentence for delivering five ounces of cocaine to Hamilton College students (and who had no prior record), said, "These laws are inhumane. . . They destroy the lives of many New Yorkers, like my family." The Hamilton students, by the way, had only purchased the drugs from Ashley at the request of police - who had enlisted the students' help after catching them buying cocaine. –H.B.