Stephen ​“The Rifleman” Flemmi was allowed to plead guilty to 10 mur­ders, drug traf­fick­ing, rack­e­teer­ing and extor­tion, as fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors agreed not to seek the death penal­ty against him in exchange for his coop­er­a­tion with ongo­ing crime inves­ti­ga­tions. Under the terms of the agree­ment, Flemmi — who has also admit­ted to mur­ders in Florida and Oklahoma — will serve a life with­out parole sen­tence in a secure unit reserved for coop­er­at­ing inmates. Among the mur­ders com­mit­ted by Flemmi were the mur­der of his girl­friend and the daugh­ter of anoth­er girl­friend. (Boston Globe, October 15, 2003). This plea con­trasts sharply with the more aggres­sive recent use of the fed­er­al death penal­ty and with the Justice Department’s rejec­tion of plea agree­ments in oth­er cas­es. (See, e.g., Boston Globe, September 20, 2003). Moreover, Flemmi’s case bears sim­i­lar­i­ties in terms of the num­ber of vic­tims to the case of John Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, who are fac­ing the death penal­ty in Virginia. The Justice Department insert­ed this lat­ter case into Virginia in order to secure death sen­tences, par­tic­u­lar­ly against Malvo. Neither the fed­er­al death penal­ty nor the statute in Maryland, which was the loca­tion of most of the mur­ders, allows the death penal­ty for some­one like Malvo, who was a juve­nile at the time of the crimes. See Federal Death Penalty.

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