LAT: Ashcroft Is Undeterred in Push for Capital Cases

[DeepModem Mom]

Ashcroft Is Undeterred in Push for Capital Cases
Despite waning jury support, the attorney general wants more federal death penalties.

By Richard B. Schmitt, Times Staff Writer


WASHINGTON — Shortly after arriving at the Justice Department nearly four years ago, Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft was faced with a new internal study that raised serious questions about the application of the federal death penalty.

A small number of federal districts, including pockets of Texas and Virginia, were accounting for the bulk of death cases. Experts decried the geographical disparities.

For Ashcroft, an ardent supporter of capital punishment, the solution was to seek the death penalty more often and more widely.

Since then, he has pushed federal prosecutors around the country — often over their objections — to be more aggressive in identifying prosecutions that could qualify as federal capital cases. Much of that effort has been in states that have banned or rarely impose capital punishment....


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-death29sep29,1,371644.story?coll=la-home-headlines

[Ruffhowse]

1. Gotta love these fundies, they sure love to kill. And baby Jesus wept.

[DU9598]

2. Sioux City

The Justice Department swooped down into the US District Court for the Northern District of Iowa to force a death penalty case here. Iowa is a no death penalty state, yet the feds came in and made us the district go for death rather than life/no parole. So much for state rights. Luckily, if the inmate gets death it will be carried out in Kansas, not Iowa.

Fear Ashcroft.