Mr. Death
For the Berkshire Eagle.

Attorney General John Ashcroft has a thing about killing people. He has ordered U.S. attorneys in New York, Connecticut and Vermont to seek the death penalty for defendants in 13 cases where they had not been inclined to pursue it. The 13 cases in the Northeast represent nearly half the 28 cases where the attorney general has exercised his authority to order a death penalty prosecution. A Justice Department spokeswoman says the attorney general wants to make sure the federal death penalty statute is applied “in a consistent and fair manner across the country,” so that there is not “one standard in Georgia and another in Vermont.”
Mr. Ashcroft’s monomaniacal focus on the death penalty also threatens to undermine the effectiveness of federal prosecutors. In one Brooklyn case, Mr. Ashcroft rejected a plea bargain for a man who offered to cooperate with prosecutors against his co-defendants in a murder and drug trafficking case in return for a recommendation that his life be spared. The plea deal is a prosecutor’s most powerful tool for cracking a conspiracy — it turns a co-conspirator into a witness. In this case, defense lawyers had a signed agreement with a federal prosecutor, approved by his immediate superior, which was rejected by Mr. Ashcroft. Now they must go to trial without their star witness.
Mr. Ashcroft, a devout conservative, says he is for states’ rights but when it comes to the death penalty there is no more ardent federalist. “States do not have the option of opting out of federal death penalty law any more than they had the option of opting out of civil rights laws in the 1960s,” an unidentified senior Justice Department official told the Washington Post. Funny he should mention civil rights. Of the 23 people now on federal death row, 17, or 74 percent, are non-whites, a figure that exactly mirrors the percentage of non-whites among defendants approved for a capital prosecution since the federal death penalty took effect. Racial bias is one of many reasons the death penalty has fallen into disrepute nationwide.
John Ashcroft, however, doesn’t care about the bias and failings of the death penalty or what the people of New York or New England think. He doesn’t mind casting conservatism aside when it suits him. This man who swore to a Senate that foolishly confirmed him in his post that he would not let his personal prejudices influence his judgments has been carried away by blood lust.

You know, he’s got a point. If the Death Penalty is going to be used disproportionately and unfairly in some states, it’s only fair (albeit in a sick, sadistic kind of way) that it be used improperly against defendants straight across the board.
Ask yourself this: how would you like to be given the Death Penalty for committing some terrorist act without being given a chance to have any sort of a real trial? That’s where they’re going with this.
Ashcroft Pushes Executions in More
Cases in New York By Benjamin Weiser and William Glaberson for the
NY Times.

Attorney General John Ashcroft has ordered United States attorneys in
New York and Connecticut to seek the death penalty for a dozen
defendants in cases in which prosecutors had recommended against or did
not ask for capital punishment, according to lawyers who follow the
issue. Those are nearly half of all the cases nationwide in which Mr.
Ashcroft has rejected prosecutors’ recommendations in a death penalty
case.
Mr. Ashcroft’s decision to reject the confidential recommendations of
the federal prosecutors for 10 defendants in New York and 2 in
Connecticut is part of an aggressive effort to assure nationwide
consistency in decisions to seek the federal death penalty, federal
officials say.
Under the law, the attorney general has final approval on whether to
seek the death penalty in federal cases…
Mr. Ashcroft’s decision in that case was disclosed to lawyers in New
York this week, just days after it was revealed that he had rejected the
recommendation of federal prosecutors in Brooklyn and ordered them to
seek the death penalty against a murder suspect on Long Island who had
already agreed to plead guilty in exchange for testimony against others
in a dangerous Colombian drug ring.
The Justice Department would not comment on Mr. Ashcroft’s decisions
involving the latest three defendants, which were related to The New
York Times by a defense lawyer who was told about the matter…
Mr. Ashcroft’s aggressive approach in the New York region was criticized
yesterday by lawyers who said the best way to eliminate geographic
disparities in capital punishment was not to increase its use but to
reduce it. No federal court jury in New York City has yet returned a
verdict for the death penalty since the revised federal capital
punishment laws were passed more than a decade ago.
“They want to set a consistent national standard for these cases,” said
David A. Ruhnke, who represents a defendant in the new Manhattan case,
“but the standards they’re using are the standards used by Texas
district attorneys running for re-election.”

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