Stephen LaValle, who raped, sexually molested, and murdered high-school track coach Cynthia Quinn (stabbed seventy-three times with a screwdriver) during her Sunday morning jog was tried and convicted by a lower court of rape and murder in the first degree.

LaValle also argued that the emotional testimony of Quinn's husband was largely irrelevant to the case, and served only to earn him a harsher sentence from the jury.

While the court upheld LaValle's conviction, citing "overwhelming evidence of guilt" to support it (largely based on LaValle's own confession as well as eyewitness testimony), the court did invalidate the death sentence, on the grounds that it violated Article 1, Section 6 of the New York Constitution.

That section addressed what would happen if a jury deadlocked on the penalty to be imposed: life without the possibility of parole, or death.

In that case, the District Attorney of Queens County sought to carve an exception to Lavalle, but the court rejected that effort.