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Attorney General John Ashcroft has ordered federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty for a murder suspect, even though he had agreed to testify against others tied to a deadly Colombian drug ring in exchange for a life sentence.
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Lawyers said it appeared to be the first case nationally in which Mr. Ashcroft had insisted on seeking the execution of a defendant who had secured a promise of life in exchange for information.
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Mr. Ashcroft has stirred a controversy in federal prosecutors' offices nationally in recent months by insisting that they seek executions in some cases in which they had recommended against it. Under Justice Department rules, local federal prosecutors can only recommend whether to seek the death penalty; the final decision is up to the attorney general.
Defense lawyers, and some current and former prosecutors, said the case here has taken that controversy to a new level because the previous cases had not involved potential cooperators.
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... a former senior federal prosecutor in Brooklyn, said it was "a remarkably bad decision" to superimpose national death penalty policy over local federal prosecutors' judgments about cooperating witnesses. "It will likely result in fewer murders being solved because fewer defendants will choose to cooperate," ...
Leaving aside my objections to the death penalty, this is idiotic. It'll make it impossible to get pleas, which was about the only freaking argument for the death penalty I ever bought - the effectiveness of using it to get people to narc on their pals. I mean, I don't actually know it's all that good for that purpose, but it seems to work pretty well on Law and Order, which is where most of my knowledge of criminal law comes from...
TBogg snarks on this.