June 16, 2003
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The news must have ruined John Ashcroft's Sunday. And his Father's Day celebration. The New York Times reported that federal juries refused to impose the sentence of death 15 of the 16 times it was requested in 2002. For you see, death-loving Ashcroft is on a death-penalty rampage. Last year he forced many prosecutors to go for death against their better judgment, sometimes even making them back out on guilty plea arrangements where a defendant had been promised life in exchange for cooperating with the government.
In a disgusting display of blood-lust in my neighborhood, Ashcroft last fall snatched the juvenile "Beltway sniper" John Lee Malvo, out of a detention facility in Maryland (which did not have the death penalty then--it does not, having elected a Republican in Ashcroft's own likeness who even ran on the DP as a political platform) and moved him to Fairfax County, Virginia, where he was handed over to local prosecutors with the instruction to see that he was charged with capital murder and put to death. Prosecutors are working hard to do just that.
The data on the federal trials does not explain why federal juries said no to death, and statisticians warn that it may just be a one-time anomaly. But there is reason to hope that thinking (you don't even have to be compassionate on this one) Americans have heard one too many stories of innocent people being released from death row, where they were near execution for crimes they did not commit.
Such was the record in Illinois, that then Gov. Jim Ryan commuted all death sentences to life in prison, in one of his last acts as governor. The furious attorney general of Illinois is working to try to get the death sentences restored.
Unlike John Ashcroft and George Bush, who deny that an innocent person has ever been put to death in America (or the current Supreme Court, writing, in its denial of the appeal of a Virginia defendant, that guilt or innocence is not their concern), these jurors may have worried that they might send an innocent man to his death.
Then, maybe jurors take their role seriously, something John does not want them to do. You see, he only wants jurors--and everyone else for that matter--to do as he says. I wonder if he will soon take to attacking the character and patriotism of jurors who don't obey him? Or worse--conduct survelliance on them or keep a list of them, as he is doing under a new federal law that makes judges report to him when they don't impose the maximum federal sentence?
It is worth noting that the states in which jurors refused to order death included strongly pro-death penalty states, like Texas, Virginia, and Florida. Last week, a jury in Binghamton, N.Y., sentenced two defendants to life without parole for torturing and killing a rival drug dealer.
Franklin E. Zimring, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, suggests another explanation: defense attorneys in federal trials are more competent and better paid--be they court-appointed, federal public defenders, or private attorneys. I practice in federal court, and few federal judges would countenance the disgraceful work of many court-appointed attorneys we have read about, most notably in Texas (where attorneys have been asleep or drunk at counsel table).
Alan Vinegrad, a former United States attorney in Brooklyn, said the recent statistics represented something larger.
"It reflects that the tide is turning in this country with regard to attitudes about the death penalty," Mr. Vinegrad said. "There has been so much publicity about wrongfully convicted defendants on death row that people sitting on juries are reluctant to impose the ultimate sanction."
I hope he is right. Whatever the reason, jurors have said "no" to John Ashcroft, and that is more than Congress or most federal judges have done.
Posted by Elaine Cassel at June 16, 2003 5:14 AM
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