An Updated Penal Code

After four years of work comparable to rewriting a constitution, the State Commission on Revision of the Penal Law and Criminal Code has presented to the New York Legislature a finished product that represents significant improvements.

This first complete overhaul in nearly 85 years leaves unanswered, for the time being, the most immediate question facing the Legislature-whether capital punishment shall be abolished. A yes answer is expected from the commission shortly, however, and if it does come, it will carry weight at the Capitol.

While it is doubtful that the commission went far enough in broadening the definition of criminal insanity, a change in the right direction would find a defendant insane if "he lacks substantial capacity to . . . appreciate... the nature and consequence of such conduct or that such conduct was wrong."

Some commendable changes in laws relating to sexual conduct are proposed. The buyer as well as the seller in prostitution would be subject to penalty of the law, thus obliterating an old and unjust double standard. Adultery would no longer be a crime, nor would deviant sexual intercourse between consenting adults. The commission majority, two members dissenting, considered these "a matter of private morality."

A great deal of the commission's work was less controversial but highly constructive. Whole sections of old law were weeded out, or transferred as being administrative or civil. There is still a job for the Legislature to do in getting rid of antiquated law making it illegal for government officials to disseminate birth-control information. The commission merely shifted this prohibition to the Health Code.

A year ago the commission, headed by Assemblyman Richard J. Bartlett of Glens Falls and composed of lay lawyers as well as legislators, delivered a detailed preview report of its thinking to the Legislature. Though there has been some revision in the new report, the Legislature has had enough time to consider most of the recommendations so there should not be too much delay in acting on the proposed code. But if it is going to do so intelligently, it will have to bring more order and diligence into its procedure than it has been able to muster so far in this session.

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Editorial, New York Times, March 17, 1965

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