Sept. 11, 2001. Will any New Yorker – indeed, will anyone in the world – ever forget that date? Because of the horrendous amount of death and devastation the Moslem fundamentalist hijackers wrecked on New York City, including the apocalyptic collapse of the World Trade Center’s twin towers, New York City has become the epicenter and symbol of victimization by terrorists. As a result, it is probably not surprising that the New York Legislature would quickly take up the subject of terrorism, although no one could have predicted the extraordinary speed with which the Legislature acted.
Effective Sept. 17, 2001, less than a week after the attack on the World Trade Center, the Legislature enacted Penal Law Article 490, which creates six new crimes severely punishing “terrorism” and those who “materially support it.”[1]�
