The Death Penalty Under Fire

John Ashcroft's aggressive pursuit of the death penalty may be backfiring. A U.S. district judge in Vermont last week ruled the federal death penalty unconstitutional, arguing that the law violates defendants' due-process rights because it allows looser procedures and standards of evidence in sentencing than are allowed at trial. The ruling in U.S. v. Fell followed a similar one by a New York judge in July. The irony is that in both cases the Attorney General ordered the local federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty even though they wanted to ask for lesser sentences. Since taking office, Ashcroft has reversed prosecutors' sentencing recommendations and sought capital punishment in cases involving 16 defendants. Now it appears his hard-line stance has opened a Pandora's box of legal ammunition for death-penalty foes. Recently Ashcroft told prosecutors in upstate New York to ask for the death penalty in the case of three men charged with murder, drug conspiracy and weapons possession in the killing of an alleged rival drug dealer; the prosecutors had planned to seek life without parole. Lawyers for those defendants are contemplating a motion to delay the trial while an appeals court considers the Fell decision. Other such challenges are sure to follow. --By Viveca Novak