The Lord High Minister of Injustice strikes again, and often.
FindLaw's Writ - Kreilkamp: The Attorney General Forces Federal Prosecutors to Break Promises: Two weeks ago, Attorney General John Ashcroft rejected a recommendation by federal prosecutors that the Department of Justice decline to seek the death penalty against defendant Jairo Zapata. The prosecutors, however, had already signed a deal with Zapata: If he provided information about his drug lord bosses, they would recommend that a judge not sentence him to death. Moreover, Zapata had already provided the information, thus putting himself in danger of reprisals. Yet thanks to Ashcroft, they were forced to break the deal. [...] Is it really acceptable to lie to people when their lives hang in the balance? Ashcroft seems to believe so. [...] It's not the first time. Since taking office, Ashcroft has tripled the pace set by his predecessor, Janet Reno, of rejecting such prosecutorial recommendations. So far, he has done so in 28 cases, according to research by the Federal Death Penalty Resource Counsel Project in Kentucky. The Counsel found that Reno only did so in 26 cases in a five-year period during her tenure as Attorney General.
Here is something even more disturbing: In more than 90% of Ashcroft's recommendation rejections, the defendant has been a minority group member. Also troubling is evidence that Ashcroft's rejections are political, not based on the merits of the prosecution: Nearly half involve trials in Connecticut and New York, two states that have been resistant to applying the death penalty.
Finally, there's an important difference between Ashcroft and Reno, other than the rate of recommendation rejections. Available evidence indicates that Reno did not reject recommendations embodied in a signed agreement. Ashcroft, however, has done just that. Indeed, the Kentucky Death Penalty Project says that he's done so in seven cases - suggesting that ignoring signed agreements is a deliberate pattern.
So let's summarize Ashcroft's behavior, shall we? Let's shall. (1) Death penalty good. Apply early and often. (2) The government's word, as embodied by signed agreements, is meaningless. (3) Those anti-death penalty states need to be forced to execute people, if necessary. (4) Killing minority defendants: it's a good thing!
Apparently, states' rights is the sort of thing that he only supports when the rights in question are those he wants to support.
(And all that said, and given that I loathe the man and the ground he slithers on ... even I can recognize that the last paragraph of the Findlaw's Writ article is thoroughly unfair.)
Posted by iain at February 14, 2003 12:31 AMComments
