http://www.berkshireeagle.com/Stories/0,1413,101~6267~1662245,00.htmlThe Bush administration is so bent on juicing up the number of state- sponsored executions in the United States that apparently it is attempting to nationalize capital punishment. Federal death-penalty law is so loosely written -- 60 different crimes can land a man or woman on federal death row -- that Attorney General John Ashcroft has been emboldened to yank cases out of the hands of local district attorneys and drag suspects into federal court and charge them with capital crimes. Most repugnant of all, Mr. Ashcroft is following this course in states like Massachusetts where there is no death penalty.
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This campaign is another example of a nominally pro-states'-rights administration sending the legal tanks into states that are independent enough to set policies at odds with the administration's. Nationalizing the death penalty is not only reckless in risking possibly innocent lives -- with DNA evidence pointing up more and more instances of the imperfection of the U.S. criminal-justice system -- but it also exposes purported states'- rights true believers Ashcroft and Bush as hypocrites.
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