Were US Attorneys Fired for Recommending Against the Death Penalty?

[struggle4progress]

Secrecy and the Federal Death Penalty

By Senator RUSSELL FEINGOLD

Today marks the first oversight hearing on the federal death penalty that the Senate Judiciary Committee has held in six years. ~snip~ In 2001, the Justice Department made controversial changes to the protocols for Justice Department review of death-eligible cases. The new protocols required U.S. Attorneys for the first time to get Attorney General approval to enter into plea bargains that take the death penalty off the table. This resulted, in one New York case, in Attorney General Ashcroft nullifying a plea agreement in which a defendant had agreed to cooperate with the government in exchange for pleading guilty to a non-capital murder charge. This action was heavily criticized for jeopardizing future cooperation agreements, and Ashcroft finally reversed his decision more than a year later.

Those protocol changes also reversed the presumption against seeking the federal death penalty in a local jurisdiction that had already chosen to outlaw capital punishment, and instead stated that a lack of "appropriate punishment" in the local jurisdiction should be a factor in deciding whether to bring a federal capital case.

And just this week, we received another set of newly revised death penalty protocols, which contain broad new confidentiality rules that appear to pull the curtain on how the DOJ death penalty review process is working. I am troubled by this trend toward secrecy. These are public prosecutions brought by the United States of America. Congress and the American people give immense power to the Department of Justice to act in our name and for our protection. We are entitled to know how decisions to seek the ultimate punishment are made. ~snip~

In particular, I am concerned that in the course of deciding whether to seek death in a case, neither the Deputy Attorney General nor the Attorney General meet personally with their own internal review committee that examines each case in detail. And according to what the Attorney General himself told the Judiciary Committee earlier this year, a U.S. Attorney was fired, at least in part, because he asked the Attorney General to reconsider the decision to seek the death penalty. ~snip~

http://www.counterpunch.org/feingold06272007.html

[funflower]

1. Nope. Bushco doesn't care about that. They care about power.

These people were fired because they in some way (maybe 8 different ways) failed to sufficiently enhance the Bushies' power.

[struggle4progress]

2. Don't forget that * panders to his base by killing people: it's a major talking point for that crowd